
Class _3J<C^^i^ 

Book H42^„ 

Copyright )j° 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr. 



THE HARMONY OF THE 
RELIGIOUS LIFE 



y^HESE Conferences appeared 
^-^ first in The Dolphin for 1902, 
over the name of Fra Arminio, 
They are published in book form 
for the use of individual members 
of Religious Communities, 



THE HARMONY 

OF 

THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 



BY 

HERMAN J. HEUSER 

OVERBROOK SEMINARY 



*^ Laudate Eum in chordis 
et organo.*^ — Ps. 150 



NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO 

BENZIGER BROTHERS 

PRINTERS TO THE HOLY APOSTOLIC SEE 
1902 






S^iifil mtaUt, 



REMY LAFORT, 

Censor Librorum. 



Kttqrnmatitr. 



•frJNO. M. FARLEY, 

Administrator of Neiu Tork. 



• • • • ••» • •«• ••, • « • 



.♦ • .•- • 



• • : •: • . 



••••••• • 



TMP L»BRA«V or 
CONGRESS, 

NOV, too? 
oonr B. 

Ill mii—i I ■ wmm 



COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY THE AMERICAN ECCLHSIASTICAL REVIEW. 
COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY BENZIGBR BROTHERS. 



^ CONTENTS 



PAGE 

PRELUDE ..... II 
THE GRAND ORGAN ... l6 

THE KEYBOARD . . . .19 

INTERVALS .... 21 

FLATS AND SHARPS ... 23 

PEDALS ..... 28 

AN INTONATION . . . .39 

TUNING THE ORGAN ... 46 

MONTHLY TUNING ... 49 

ORGAN PIPES AND STOPS . , 75 

THE SWELLS . . . .96 

THE SCALE .... loi 

DO, RE, MI .... 121 

FA, SOL, LA, SI, DO . . . 142 

m 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

£tudes . . . . .161 

a vocation .... 167 
motives and principles of the 

«* £tudes " . . . .170 

progress, not change . . 174 

CAUTION . . . . .178 

FIRST £TUDE . . . . 180 

SECOND £TUDE . . . .185 

THIRD £TUDE .... 192 

PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE . . .200 

CULTIVATION OF STYLE . . 202 

EXPRESSION . . . .207 

TEMPO ... . 212 

FORTE . . , . .214 

A PIACERE .... 219 

CRESCENDO . . . .223 

STACCATO .... 226 
MODERATO ..... 234 

AN ANTIPHON . , . , 244 



TT 



The Harmony of the 
Religious Life 

Prelude. 

LamartinEj the poet, who had an 
intense as well as instinctive appre- 
ciation of the harmonies of nature, 
relates in one of his MemoireSy how, 
when a child, he was in the habit of 
making little instruments of music 
upon which heavenly spirits played 
sweet harmonies. He would take a 
slender bit of willow branch and tie 
it in the fashion of a bow or harp, 
across which he stretched a number 
of threads taken from the blonde 
tresses of his young sister's head. 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 

Then exposing the tiny instrument to 
the air, so that the gentle breathings 
of the summer wind could sweep the 
delicate strings, his childish ear would 
listen to the response, and fancy or 
discern the soft sounds of music far 
away, as though it came from a chorus 
of angelic spirits. One day, writes the 
author of the Meditations Po^tiques, it 
occurred to us children thus engaged 
in play to find out whether the 
angels played the same tunes upon 
harps whose chords were of differ- 
ent fiber from that of my sister's 
hair. We had an aunt, of very gentle 
disposition, who lived with us and 
watched our childish sports whilst 
sitting in the garden engaged with 
her embroidery. Her hair was of a 
silver white, blanched early during the 

[12] 



MUSIC OF THE SPHERES. 

harrowing scenes of the Reign of 
Terror which she had witnessed. We 
asked her to cut off one of her tresses 
that we might make other harps and 
find out what melodies the angels 
played on them. With a sweet smile 
she complied — and singularly enough, 
whether it was due to the difference 
of tension in stretching the threads of 
hair across the frame, as these were 
more or less elastic in their nature, or 
whether it, was that the currents of 
wind passing over the two harps were 
in one case more gentle than in the 
other — at all events, we found that the 
celestial spirits sounded a melancholy 
and yet more sweetly harmonious air 
upon the silver-stringed harp than upon 
the bright blonde strands of my sister's 
hair. And from that day on we often 

[13] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

importuned our gentle aunt to let our 
hands despoil her beautiful brow, that 
we might hear the melodious voices of 
the angels that sang for her in the 
spheres. 

It was a pretty touch of ingenuity 
which made the childish hearts discover 
not only the hidden harmonies of God*s 
invisible creation, but led them to trace 
the differences in the expressions of 
youth and age. The fact suggests the 
inference that, if we look thoughtfully 
enough into the world that lies around 
us, we shall there find distinct echoes of 
the heavenly voices, not merely to 
awaken pleasure, but to teach deep 
lessons of truth. 

I have often looked upon the rows 

of religious at prayer or at instruction 

in their stalls, devoutly thoughtful, and 

[14] 



THE CONVENT ORGAN. 

sometimes with that sight arose the 
image of a grand instrument of music — 
a harp, or better, an organ — uttering 
sweet harmony through the silent 
spheres, caught up by angelic choirs in 
heaven and sending back its charming 
echoes to the whole communion of 
saints on earth. 

And so in truth it is. A religious 
community, if it be as God designed it, 
resembles a grand instrument of music, 
a harp of which the individual mem- 
bers are the strings, or an organ of 
which they represent the separate 
keys which are touched by the Divine 
Hand, to give forth sweet harmony of 
a heavenly music, according to the will 
of God, who is the master artist con- 
trolling the instrument. The melodious 
chords of His play vary as He ex- 

[15] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

presses His pleasure, caressing the 
grateful and docile soul, or manifesting 
His glory, or sweetly attracting with 
loving invitation the wayward heart in 
danger of straying. Let those of my 
readers who have chosen to be members 
of a religious institute which He has 
fashioned into an instrument whose 
melodies might soothe and attract souls 
unto Himself, enter briefly into this 
view of the religious life. 



The Grand Organ. 

We are all familiar with the organ 
used in the divine service. There is a 
keyboard. A long row of ivory and 
ebony pieces, white and black, arranged 
side by side in perfect order; and 

[i6] 



THE PERFECT INSTRUMENT. 

though all the keys look alike, when 
touched by the hand of the Master 
each sounds forth a separate note; they 
all differ in name, in power, in natural 
sweetness, or resonance. 

The perfection of the instrument de- 
pends on three things, and requires 
that : 

(i) each key sound its note clear, 
distinct, and pure; 

(2) each key respond promptly to 
the touch of the player ; 

(3) each note, while absolutely keep- 
ing its distinct sound, combine its own 
action with that of other notes in such 
a way as to produce harmony. 

And this likeness indicates the per- 
fection of the religious community 
which is the living instrument under 

the hand of our Divine Master. The 

ri7l 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 

religious take their places side by side, 
as the keys, black and white — symbolic 
of both purity and soberness — in per- 
fect order. There appears hardly any 
distinction in the closely serried ranks 
of community life. And yet there is, 
as in the notes of the organ, a distinct- 
ness which calls for different names, an 
individuality of gifts of mind and body 
which calls for a difference of service. 
Some of the keys are in constant use — 
those midway in life ; others are rarely 
touched — those at the end of life. Yet 
all are needed to complete the board. 

As the perfection of this grand in- 
strument, the organ, depends on 

purity of sound ; 

prompt action of each key ; and 

a ready combination of different keys 
to produce one harmonious chord — so 

[i8] 



THE KEYBOARD. 



the perfection of the religious com- 
munity depends on 

purity of intention and action ; 

prompt obedience ; 

readiness to combine with others so 
as to promote harmony of the religious 
spirit. 

The Keyboard. 

The touch of a key must call forth 
a sound pure and clear, promptly re- 
sponsive, in harmony with the notes 
sounded simultaneously. Thus the 
concord of religious life depends on 
purity of intention and action, on 
prompt obedience, on charity's fair 
tolerance with others as with ourselves. 

The things which hinder purity of 

intention are the things which foster 

self-deceit in us. It may be, too, that 

[19] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

the gravity of our downward-tending 
human nature drags us now and then 
in the dust, so as to stain our acts with 
the mire of earthly motives and affec- 
tions ; but then we find ever our cor- 
rective in obedience, especially when 
the wise toleration of our superiors and 
monitors makes us see our fault before 
exacting the penalty of submission. 
What else is the religious Rule but the 
mechanism that enables the breath of 
heaven to enter the pipes of this grand 
organ, that through them might be con- 
veyed to others the sweet melodies 
which the Sacred Heart of our Royal 
Master inspires ? And if this be so, is 
it not also necessary that the little 
hammers which are part of this me- 
chanism should at intervals beat down 
upon our sensitiveness, or that we 

[20] 



PROPER DISTANCE. 

should feel the restraining force of the 
strings, holding the levers which phy- 
sically control the inspired action ? 

But as the service of a true religious 
is the service of love, it must not wholly 
rest upon obedience. The harmony 
produced by this instrument must be, 
like the keys of a good instrument, 
spontaneous^ ready, generous, character- 
ized by that fruitful ingenuity of loving 
hearts which knows how to put others 
at their ease, which never thinks of self 
or weighs the cost of a sacrifice, when it 
is clear that charity is kindled thereby. 

Intervals. 

And yet here we may learn from the 
laws of harmony to be cautious. It is 
true that charity is the only living virtue 

[21] 



^ 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

to which we may abandon ourselves 
without misgivings ; it overtops all 
other virtues, even as the mercy of 
God is above His justice. Neverthe- 
less, charity is perfect only when it is 
regulated. Harmony in music may be 
defined as an agreement of sounds 
produced at proper distances from each 
other. The proper distance is im- 
portant. Too close approximation, de- 
stroying the intervals, at once destroys 
harmony. The notes struck by the 
keys pair in thirds or fifths or octaves, 
and thus produce a concord of sweet 
sounds ; only rarely can two notes quite 
close together help the transition from 
sound to sound in harmony. So it is 
with the friendship of religious life. 
Respect, not familiarity, preserves it. 
Harmony demands likewise that we 

[22] 



FOOLISH OR TOO WISE. 

yield readily in point of time. A key 
tenacious of its hold, swelled out by the 
dampness of the atmosphere, will keep 
on sounding a note after the player has 
released it ; and even though the note 
itself be good and clear, it will never- 
theless destroy the harmony of sounds 
by its untimely insistence. So punctu- 
ality, and the law which ordains for 
everything the proper time, are an 
integral constituent of good order and 
harmony in religion. 

Flats and Sharps. 

In the religious life there must be no 
flats or sharps. Flats and sharps are 
good only when we deal with world- 
lings, — and that ought to be rarely. 
On such occasions plenty of accidentals 

are needed, either to bring back the 

[23] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

right tone or to prepare a transition to 
a clearer chord. But in our instrument 
provision is made for perfect chords, 
and in the society of our own members 
we hardly need sharps and flats — least 
of all, flats ; these ought to be forbidden 
by every religious Rule, One of the 
most saintly founders of religious insti- 
tutes in modern times used to impress 
it upon the members of her community 
that, " The first rule of the house is 
not to bore anybody/* She wanted 
joy which, if it proceed from a virtuous 
heart, is always intelligent, though it 
may not always be prudent. "It is 
enough," she said, " that we are stupid 
by nature; it is quite superfluous to 
endeavor to be stupid also by grace/' 
Sometimes a certain ready intelligence 

is accounted wisdom with religious ; 

[24] 



LIKE UNTO LITTLE ONES. 

it often looks like prudence, and yet 
even with regard to this cardinal 
virtue we need to be cautious, unless 
we are quite sure that it has its basis 
deep down in charity. Without chari- 
ty prudence becomes simply animal 
shrewdness and makes us suspicious 
and critical. If there be one thing 
that is clear regarding the requisite 
disposition for entering the King- 
dom of our Master, it is that we 
be like little children. Now, little 
children, though very easily hurt be- 
cause they are sensitive, do not as a 
rule foster resentment; they forgive 
quickly; they have no suspicions ; they 
are not punctilious; they are, above all, 
generous and simple-minded ; and last 
of all, they have a singular faculty for 

spreading joy. When we have suffi- 

[25] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

ciently practised the simplicity and big- 
hearted disposition of little children, so 
that nothing can wound our sensitive- 
ness, leaving the feeling of malice and 
ill-will; when we have learnt to be 
proof against taking scandal, and have 
developed the child's talent of creating 
and spreading joy, then we may safely 
abandon ourselves to that prudent in- 
stinct which is the gift of the Holy 
Ghost and comes to those who seek 
only God. 

It is true a religious is taught to 
discriminate in .the matter of giving 
pleasure to others, even of laboring 
for others. The secular motto, " Mind 
your own business," is an excellent 
device for keeping on the straight path 
of the spiritual life. Furthermore, the 
religious Rule tells us very clearly that 

[26] 



PERSONAL SANCTIFICATION, 

our personal sanctification is the first 
object for which we enter religious life 
with its counsels of perfection ; and that 
next to this only comes the service of 
others in pursuit of the special aims 
of the institute to which we may 
belong. Yet this is but a seeming 
distinction, in so far as the means to 
any end is ever subservient to that 
end, whilst the end itself is attained 
only by the means. Thus, if we 
accomplish the primary aim of our 
vocation by the means assigned, we 
shall, in saving our souls, have bene- 
fited our neighbor and fulfilled the 
principal object of our religious insti- 
tute. Hence, a zealous fulfilment of 

our work as instructors of the igno- 
rant, comforters of the afflicted, helpers 

of the poor, in the spirit of our 

[27] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Order, means direct sanctification, and 
is, therefore, in the first instance, of 
actual and practical importance. 

Pedals. 

I have said that as the perfection 
of a musical instrument under the 
hand of a skilful master depends on 
the three facts of purity of sound, 
prompt response to the touch of the 
artist, and harmonious agreement with 
the other notes of the register, so 
the perfection of a religious commu- 
nity depends on purity of intention 
and action, on prompt obedience, and 
on readiness to promote the harmony 
of a religious house. But there re- 
mains something else that gives a 
royal undertone, a certain mellowness 

[28] 



SELF-SACRIFICE. 

and richness, to the sounds of a grand 
instrument. It is the pedal work, 
deep down, unseen, but sustaining 
the notes above. That pedal work 
corresponds in the religious life to 
the spirit of sacrifice. It is nothing 
distinct from the virtue of charity, or 
zeal, or self-denial, and yet it is that 
which, like the grand undertones of 
the lower pedals of an organ, lends 
a royal richness to its harmonious 
action. 

Harmony in the religious life essen- 
tially demands the spirit of self -sacrifice. 
It has been remarked that, while the 
Church calls her virgin daughters 
brideSy the religious Rule of nearly 
every institute, cherishing indeed the 
title of Sponsa Christi as an honor 

and a privilege, assumes, nevertheless, 

[29] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

that its daughters in the pursuit of 
their work of charity fulfil the task 
of mothers. And where the religious 
Rule does not give those who have 
made their probation this title, it 
belongs to them at least in the eyes 
of those for whom they labor — the 
little ones and the poor of Christ. 
That title of "mother" means a task 
of sacrifice ; and it is a mother's pecu- 
liar privilege that all her sorrows and 
hardships may become the basis of 
joys for others, even in the natural 
order. The task of religious charity 
is the task of a mother's care that 
does not count any pain short of that 
pain which comes from the denial of 
Christ. 

Do we realize what that means ? 

Under the Emperor Licinius there 

[30] 



THE SOLDIER OF CHRIST. 

was in Armenia a band of men, 
valiant soldiers, bound together like 
religious by a vow to serve Christ 
in harmonious fulfilment of His holy 
law. They chanted their Christian 
hymns, as was the custom, morning 
and night; and their union made 
them so strong and formidable in 
battle that they were enlisted under 
the so-called thundering legion — " ter- 
ribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata." 
One day Lysias, their General, was 
ordered to appear with his men at a 
solemn service of the pagan rite. 
Forty of the legion, all distinguished, 
despite their youth, for valiant service, 
advanced to the General and with 
modest manliness refused to enter the 
temple. They were detailed to ap- 
pear before the judge, Agricola, who 

[31] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

asked their names. One after the 
Other they answered : " Cbristianus sum " 
— " I am a Christian." They wished 
thus to emphasize the fact that, what- 
ever their original country and family 
relations, they were the sons of one 
Father, whose kingdom they knew it 
would be their lot soon to enter 
united by the bonds of common mar- 
tyrdom as of their common faith. 
The story of their awful sufferings 
and death is well known. Their 
united chant, as they lay tortured and 
bleeding on the icy plain of Armenia, 
was, we are told, the CXX Psalm, 
Levavi oculos meos in te Domine, qui 
hahitas in coelis. Gradually, as the 
morning advanced, the song died from 
the lips of the dying soldiers, until 

but one was left feebly pouring out 

[32] 



THE TRUE MOTHER. 



his noble longing for the eternal stars 
above. He was very young, but 
strong and valiant and beautiful in 
the God-given pride that belongs to 
early life. He had survived the tor- 
tures of days ; and now, when the 
guards came to break his limbs, that 
he might quickly die, he ceased to 
sing. At that moment a woman, his 
mother, who had been watching all 
through the night in prayer near by, 
broke past the guards toward the 
youth still writhing in his blood, 
and lifting his head gently to her 
bosom, whispered into his ear : " O 
hold out, my son ! for behold thy 
Master awaits thee at the gate!" And 
then, seeing that the wagon which 
was to carry away the dead bodies 

of the martyrs to the burial pit had 

[33] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

moved on, she lifted the sweet burden 
of her son upon her aged shoulders 
and followed the train, lest he might 
be separated even in death from his 
brothers in the faith. 

Such, in sooth, is every true Chris- 
tian mother s faith and love toward 
the child whom God has entrusted 
to her care. It must be our way, too ! 

Would we know what such faith 
and love can effect in the heart of a 
child trained by Christian affection 
and in the spirit of sacrifice? We 
find the answer in those same Martyr 
Acts to which I have referred just 
now. On the 24th of October they 
relate the death of more than three 
hundred Christians at one execution 
under the Emperor Justin. The ac- 
count ends thus : Lastly they brought 

[34] 



THE SECRET OF ATTRACTION 

a Christian woman to be burnt alive 
at the stake. A little boy, five years 
of age, ran by her side. Whilst fire 
was being set to the pile upon which 
the mother had been bound, her little 
son was kept at a short distance. It 
would increase the torture of the 
mother and also of the child, whose 
cries rang above the noise of the tumul- 
tuous crowd, rending the air and the 
generous mother^s heart. But she 
kept calling to her little one : " My 
child, love only the good Christ, and 
He will bring thee to thy mother.'* 
And the infant voice, trained to obey 
in holy love, repeated the words: "I 
love only the good Christ, who will 
bring me to my mother." Then sud- 
denly he freed himself from the hand 
of the soldier who weakly restrained 

[351 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

him, and ran up to the burning pile 
that he might go with her who had 
taught him to love Christ, even 
through flames, which could not 
weaken her own love. 

Are we capable of teaching such 
faith to the children whom God en- 
trusts to our care with equal — nay, 
superior — means at our command ? I 
do not hesitate to answer: Yes, as- 
suredly, provided we ourselves possess 
the spirit of self-sacrifice that goes 
with Christian faith and charity, as it 
is interpreted by our holy vocation 
and the example as well as the teach- 
ing of our institute. In the annals of 
the Ladies of the Sacred Heart we 
read how on the feast of St. Mary 
Magdalen, just sixty years ago, P. 

Varin asked the novices in the Paris 

[36] 



THE SPIRIT OF OUR INSTITUTE. 

convent whether they were prepared 
then and there, or in the next few 
days, to die on the scaffold which 
the revolutionists in their hatred of 
religion had erected in the streets of 
the city. They did not reflect very 
long. "Yes; only shall we have time 
to make our vows before it?'* They 
were but novices, yet they would be 
glad to seal with their blood the 
compact made with Christ, if only it 
were ratified by the Institute of the 
Sacred Heart to which they had 
pledged their fidelity. Are not all 
our religious men and women trained 
to this valor by the same spirit of 
self-sacrifice that characterizes the con- 
ventual institutes wherein are made 
the vows of poverty, chastity, and 

obedience? If those young Parisian 

[37] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

novices in 1830 found in their insti- 
tute the strength that filled their 
hearts with the blood of martyrs, why- 
should it fail those who profess to 
follow the same lofty standard of re- 
ligious self-denial? Hence we see of 
what supreme value it is that we 
make this daily life a true symphony 
that is capable of inspiring courage to 
do great things in little ways for our 
Divine Master. Courage is a con- 
tagious virtue, albeit it is a silent 
growth in a religious house ; and in 
the peace and harmony that breathe 
through the halls of a convent it is 
not difficult to cherish the embers of 
a sacred fire, a love, meek and humble, 
but capable of bursting into flames 
that consume sin and ingratitude, and 

convert into new forms the darkened 

[38] 



OUR POSITION. 

gold of weak and sin-stained souls. 
Is it not the privilege of the religious 
to fan the flame of a zealous love, 
catching it, as it were, from the Divine 
Heart of Him who came to cast it 
among men, wishing that it be kindled? 

An Intonation. 

And now let me sum up what has 
been thus far said : A community of 
religious men or women is an instru- 
ment devised and constructed by God, 
and in the hands of our divine Lord, 
who sits upon His chaste throne, to 
control the keys of our hearts. It is 
He who has placed us in the exact 
position in which we are ; and it is 
essential to the fulfilment of His de- 
signs that we should be just where 

and what we are. 

[39] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

That design is, as I have said, two- 
fold. First, to fill the heavens and 
the earth with His glory (by our 
activity freely given to His service 
from motives, not of necessity, as is 
the case with irrational creatures, but 
of love and devotion). Secondly, to 
win to His service and to a participa- 
tion in His glory those who sit in the 
valley of sadness and the shadow of 
death, by communicating to them the 
sweet and skilful strains of His music, 
allowing Him to enter the deep recesses 
of their souls, and thus to attract them 
to His presence and to the enjoyment 
and refining operation of His heavenly 
charms. 

We are the medium through which 

this twofold purpose can be and is 

to be accomplished. Alas! that we 

[40] 



THE MUTE KEY. 

should have it in our power, iiot 
only not to correspond to this mag- 
nanimous design, but even to frus- 
trate it! For, note it well, a single 
key, from end to end of that long 
row, which fails to yield and answer 
clearly and readily to the touch of 
His Sacred Hand not only re- 
mains mute, but jars, confuses and 
destroys the concord of sweet sounds. 
And if by our weakness we cut off 
the harmony destined for heaven; 
if by our failure to respond clearly 
and promptly to the call of our 
great Master at the organ of His 
chosen institute we silence His invita- 
tion, it would be a great injury to 
God's cause. 

Yet even this, deeply humiliating 

as it is. He might forgive, as He 

[41] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

has done a thousand times, being 
mindful of our weak ways. But it 
is hard to say what He could do, 
even in the full length of His gentle 
forbearing, in order that He might 
restore and set right the losses of 
and to souls which by our resistance 
or indifference we have failed to draw 
to Him. Is it not our daily task 
to transmit and communicate the in- 
spirations that issue from His Sacred 
Heart, by the sweet modes of our 
charity, unto the needy souls com- 
mitted to our keeping? Are we of 
any value if we have lost the power 
or the will or the generous eagerness 
to catch the sublime strains arousing 
motives in the hearts of others, for 
the search after and the love of God? 
They say that a single word, vibrating 

[42] 



SULLEN FAILURE. 

through the air, sets in motion un- 
told currents that eventually effect 
the movement of whole worlds in 
their courses through space. It is 
reasonable on physical grounds. Is 
it unreasonable to assume that He, 
who made all things physical but 
the images of some spiritual power 
or truth, will hold us some day ac- 
countable for the jangle and disso- 
nance caused in the world and the 
movement of souls by sullen failure 
to answer ^His beating of time from 
the sacred chair where He sits day 
and night awaiting our correspondence ? 
But whilst it is an appalling con- 
sciousness to have refused the little 
sacrifices which, caught up by His 
love, would swell the harmonious 
sounds pouring out from His Sacred 

[43] 



THE HARMONi^ OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Heart, it is a great joy to know that 
we have helped on the conquest of 
souls ! We are small, very small ; 
and yet the dignity of being an essen- 
tial part of this majestic movement 
of sounds filling the heavens of our 
God with their thrilling strains, making 
Paradise in the souls of men and lifting 
them up into the choirs that throng 
round the throne of Heaven — is there 
anything like to it 'in the honors of 
the world? Dexter a Domini fecit me. 
If the worldling deems it wise, for 
the gaining of a blazing brief renown, 
to touch his facile lyre to please the 
ear and win the buzzing plaudits of 
the crowd, shall we in timid love of 
self withhold the chant that carols 
loud and clear up to the stars and 

[44] 



WE THE INSTRUMENT. 

finds its echo in the waiting, longing 
hearts of men ? 

Whenever we hear the strains of 
the organ in chapel, and join our 
voices in concordant praises of the 
Divine Spouse, which are but a pre- 
lude to those celestial chants of grati- 
tude which we are destined to repeat 
in the heavenly Jerusalem, it ought 
to suggest the thought that our music 
is but an image and a monitor, a 
symbol, if you like, of what as a 
body we are ourselves; namely, a liv- 
ing instrument of gratitude and help- 
fulness to others, under the skilful 
hand of the great Virtuoso who sends 
forth the inspirations of His Sacred 
Heart through us. And can we rea- 
sonably have any lesser aim than that 

of making this harmony perfect by 

[45] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

yielding to His modulating touch, 
living as well as chanting the noble 
symphony, our matin song and vesper 
hymn: 

Cantate Domino canticum novum — 
a new song, fresh and clear and with- 
out a flaw, a 
Jubilate Deo in cithara et voce psalmi^ 

in organis benesonantibus — 
a virgin song unto the honor of His 
Holy Name, and to the joy of His 
children on earth? 

Tuning the Organ. 

The purpose of our reflection thus 
far has been to deepen the conviction 
that those who have made the pro- 
fession of Religious Life are specially 
chosen instruments in God's hands, 

destined to correspond to His affec- 

[46] 



THE NOTES COMBINE. 

donate designs of securing — apart from 
His own glory — the happiness of His 
creatures. 

For the better understanding of 
our position, we compared the re- 
ligious community to a magnificent 
organ in which the separate parts 
combine in such a way as to pro- 
duce that heavenly harmony which 
at once declares God's glory and 
draws souls unto Him by the sweet 
attractions of His native melodies. 

We saw how each note, represented 
by the ivory and ebony pieces of the 
key-board, although differing from 
the rest in name, in power, in natural 
timbre and resonance, does yet con- 
tribute its essential part in effecting 
that unity of variety which, accord- 
ing to the Angel of the Schools, con- 

[47] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

stitutes true beauty. And we en- 
deavored to understand how the per- 
fection of this harmony, which the 
grand organ of the Religious Life 
aims to attain, is dependent on three 
things — (i) the clearness and purity 
of the individual note ; (2) the prompt- 
ness with which each key answers to 
the touch of the Divine Artist; (3) the 
aptitude of the several notes to com- 
bme at proper intervals. 

But the grand organ is not yet 
located in Paradise, albeit our Lord 
has given orders to transport it thither 
in good time. For the present it is 
still on earth; and hence it is quite 
natural that the dust of earth should 
get into the reeds and pipes, or that 
the damp atmosphere should swell 

the keys and hamper the normal 

[48] 



WHY TUNING? 

action of an otherwise perfect instru- 
ment. Moreover, it is not only the 
dust or damp that deranges the 
organ ; but it sometimes happens 
that a naughty child of earth usurps 
the place of the Divine Organist, and 
with unskilled hand thumbs upon 
and pounds the keys so that the 
pipes become inflated, and the reeds 
distended, or the delicate joints hold- 
ing the hammers get loosened and 
occasionally break. 

And what is the remedy for all this ? 

Monthly Tuning. 

The Rule says we are to tune once 

a month; that is, when we make our 

Monthly Retreat. Besides, there is 

one grand annual tuning, after the 

instrument had been locked up during 

[49] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

the time when we took our summer 
vacation. 

It may be that when tuning day 
arrives, there is nothing to tune, still 
there are always some great festivals 
ahead for which we must examine. 
Thus Advent and Lent are practising 
times for the Christmas and Easter 
chants. We must be sure that every- 
thing is right for these occasions, in 
order that our dearest Lord may be 
pleased on His feast days, and make 
grand music out of our hearts, to 
unite us in one harmonious chorus 
for the angelic Gloria in excelsis and 
the Alleluia of gratitude, amid the 
joys of the Nativity and the Resur- 
rection. 

It may be necessary to examine 

the keys in order to find out whether 

[50] 



BEGINNING. 

every key moves easily up and down. 
If they do, then all else is likely to 
be right, since the instrument had a 
grand tuning in the autumn, when 
St. Ignatius or some kindred master 
tried his Exercises on it. So it should 
not take long to restore the flow of 
harmony in a religious house that 
lives up to the general order pre- 
scribed by its Rule. But we must 
be patient all the same ; and when 
we hear a wrong note or some other 
defect, it will not do to say : " That 
is her weakness exactly!" but say: 
"That is myself" — or at least: "If 
I don't look out, that may be my- 
self to-morrow." 

We begin the tuning: C — D — 
E — . But it is important that we 

do not forget the black keys ! They 

[51] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

are half a tone higher than the rest. 
The religious who wear the black 
veil are supposed to be higher in 
knowledge — and, therefore, in intelli- 
gent virtue (that is, if they are in 
good condition) ; or, they are a half 
tone lower, when they are behind the 
white keys. This is a thing we have 
to study out carefully. 

E— F — #F — G— #G — all right. 
A — A — A. There is something 
wrong. The key won't go down easily, 
though it yields to pressure. 

A is an important key; it really 
stands for i7, coming immediately 
after G, and may therefore mean 
Humility^ which virtue is close upon 
generosity, goodness, grace. But be- 
ing such an important note, it is 
rightly called A, There is one black 

[52] 



HUMILITY. 



key after A^ which means that in the 
matter of humility the only distinction 
between novice and professed is this, 
that the professed must reach a higher 
degree than the novices. After that 
nothing further remains ; we have 
reached the perfection of our state 
and are ready for heaven. Our 
Lord distinctly made that the be- 
ginning and end of His lesson, 
" Learn of me, for I am meek and 
humble of Heart." (Matt. ii. 29.) 

H (humility), with its concord, 
meeknesSy is the first virtue that we 
have to spell out of the story of life 
as revealed to us by the Sacred Heart, 

But if this A won't go down, it 
can not be quite humility ; for hu- 
mility goes down ever so easily. If, 

therefore, the A stands up, sticks up, is 

[53] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

"uppish," why then it is pride. And 
if our Lord takes His finger (which 
is the Rule and the voice of our 
Superiors), and, pressing upon the 
key, discovers a sulky resistance, it 
means that our pride has assumed 
the form of disobedience. 

As a matter of fact, the two de- 
fects of pride and disobedience are 
very closely connected, just as are 
the contrary virtues of humility and 
obedience. And it is well to remem- 
ber this, if we are at all anxious 
about discovering our dominant pas- 
sion. Bishop Hedley, who writes 
very beautifully on this subject in 
one of his later books, believes that 
all our influence in education or in 
any sphere of action depends upon 
the right understanding of this com- 

[54] 



OUR PRIDE. 



bination. " Most of us/* he says, 
" have a line of work or influence ; 
now we shall never work on sound 
principles until we understand that 
the humility and obedience of Jesus 
are the most mighty forces that exist; 
and, what is more, that they are the 
only forces, practically speaking, that 



count/'^ 



Let us, then, get some further 
light on the subject — even if the 
glare cause our eyes to smart a little — 
of pride, of our pride ; for it is of 
grave importance to recognize that 
the pride of the religious is not of 
the common, vulgar sort which one 
finds in the world. The habit of 
haughty disdain or of insolent self- 
assertion, or the quiet exaltation which 

1 Hedley, Retreats^ p. 137. 

[55] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

places a high price upon its own 
utterances and movements, as if to 
say: ''Look how magnificent!" — 
these manifestations of conceit do not 
commonly make their way into a 
religious house. A religious house 
where such arrant exhibitions of pride 
are possible is simply a boarding- 
house, and one not of a very respect- 
able sort. But pride is a wonderfully 
accommodating element. It thrives 
in almost any atmosphere — except in 
that of simplicity ; it goes with all 
the other virtues as naturally as a 
shadow goes with its object. Indeed, 
it might be called the shadow of 
virtue, lost for a time when the sky 
is dull, but sure to come back, ever 
varying its size with the movement of 
the sun. And if it can be very small, 

[56] 



SWELLING OUT. 

it can be very subtle as well ; indeed 
it must be so, for how else could it 
have gotten into heaven to decoy 
Lucifer from his throne? No wonder, 
then, that it should sometimes get 
into our organ, and make the keys 
swell out, so that they fail to move 
with easy grace as directed by the 
touch of divine admonition. 

This swelling out in the spiritual 
order manifests itself among good 
people like religious, according to 
spiritual writers of the older school, 
and some, like Father Faber, of the 
modern school, by self-complacency^ by 
forming a good opinion of ourselves^ by 
criticising others^ by ridiculing^ by an 
aversion to be criticised^ by a notable 
attachment to our ideas^ by obstinacy 
of will. But let us go slowly. 

[57] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Self-complacency and a good opinion 
of ourselves look very much alike. 
They are akin, only one has a grain 
of vanity in it which dilutes its 
strength ; the other is a growth of 
pride pure and simple, and is there- 
fore harder to correct. 

If, perchance, with God's tools and 
His encouraging grace we have done 
anything proximately well, forthwith 
there is the inclination to get into a 
sort of mental rocking-chair and go 
over it all, very deliberately. It 
looks like self-examination. We are 
beginning to contemplate ourselves at 
a fair distance, to pat ourselves on 
the back, to speculate as to what 
effect it must have had upon others ; 
and then we rise with a buoyant 

start, take one more look into our 

[58] 



COMPLIMENTS. 



pretty spiritual looking-glass, and give 
vent to a sort of pious fervor by 
the ejaculation: "Well, you have 
done at least something /' which means 
that we give ourselves due credit for 
the humility with which we neglected 
to do something before^ and is also 
a sort of running commentary on 
how little other people do. Possibly 
we go out, and half unconsciously 
tempt those who may have witnessed 
our heroism, and on whose good 
nature we can rely, to say something 
complimentary to us, or to talk about 
it anyhow. If they praise us gener- 
ously (which is mostly an indication 
of the goodness of the giver and not 
of that of the receiver)^ we drink it in 
with a nervous fear to interrupt the 
stream. If the praise be timidly 

[59J 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

given us, because the giver has re- 
spect for our supposed good sense, 
then we gently protest, or just admit 
part of our magnificent motives, and 
how much better we could have 
done under other circumstances more 
favorable to the growth and nature 
of our virtues. Thus, we go 
on raising our pedestal, as if we 
have never made any resolutions 
to seek God's glory first and anni- 
hilate self-love in all our undertak- 
ings. 

Nor is it only that we nourish our 
pride by a self-complacent review of 
the things which have actually been 
well done. We go a turn further. 
If we have no • merits, we imagine 
them. In truth, it is wonderful how 

well we can build with nothing, when 

[60] 



EXAMINING OURSELVES. 

it comes to rearing a monument to 
our presumable deserts. 

When in this complacent, con- 
structing mood, we are ready to 
apply to ourselves any casual praise 
flowing from passages about the saints 
which we find in spiritual reading 
books ; if persons be kind to us, we 
imagine that it must be because they 
have noticed some special merit in 
us ; if they be unkind, then they 
must be jealous for the same reason. 
Even at our examinations of con- 
science we glide instinctively from 
our omissions to the things in which 
we succeed. Instead of saying: "I 
broke my morning resolution ten 
times,** we say : " Well, I kept it 
anyhow three times." In this way 
we destroy the very virtue which we 

[6iJ 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

imagine ourselves to be in the act 
of cultivating. We are like children 
who have planted a pretty flower, 
and then go to pull it up every half 
hour to see if it has grown. 

More dangerous than the habit of 
self-complacency is the disposition which 
leads us to form a normally good 
opinion of ourselves. When in this 
state we make not only much of our 
good actions, but we persist in claim- 
ing a sort of impeccability which 
authorizes us to excuse, palliate, or 
explain away whatever is faulty and 
reprehensible in our conduct. We 
are in a rather bad condition when 
we imagine that we are about as 
good as the average religious. There 
are those who consider that open cor- 
rection from a superior is an infringe- 

[62] 



THE PAPAL DECREE. 

ment on the Papal Decree concerning 
manifestation of conscience. That de- 
cree has been much abused. If the 
Holy See commands it to be read 
before the community, it does also 
assume that those for whom it is read 
are of sound mind. There is a spirit- 
ual callousness, a kind of dull, im- 
movable heartlessness which, when 
made conscious of itself by superiors, 
refuses to be reasonable, and does so 
at the expense of authority and by 
a claim of special lights. Such re- 
ligious regard the " Manifestation '* 
document as a personal communica- 
tion of Papal infallibility to themselves. 
They will make capital out of it 
against superiors whom they dislike, 
and if, as sometimes happens, they 
get the ear of a confessor who hears 

[63] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

better on one side than the other, 
they enlist his. sympathy. The im- 
mediate result is that the discordant 
wail is prolonged by the pressure of 
an additional weight on the key from 
without. It ought to be well under- 
stood that the directions contained in 
the document Manifest atio were not 
intended to lessen the confidence which 
religious children owe to and ordi- 
narily feel toward their legitimate su- 
periors who bear to them the relation 
of mothers or fathers, not only in 
spirituals but in temporals also. It 
was meant to check the possible abuse 
On the part of superiors who impru- 
dently exact manifestations of con- 
science in matters of temptation or 
sin, which properly belong to the 

confessional. Now, if religion be any- 

[64] 



SILENT CRITICISM. 

thing, it is a school of correction, and 
people who have no faults seem to 
have no business in a religious house; 
they ought to stay in the world, 
where their example may shine, or 
where their virtue can be tried and 
heralded for the edification of sinners. 
A third manifestation of the pride 
that may find its way into religious 
houses is the habit of silent criticism. 
Criticism that is not offensive is a fine 
art. That is the kind which select 
souls who dislike the world cultivate 
most readily. While we silently com- 
ment on the shortcomings of our neigh- 
bor, we are making ravages in our own 
souls. There is one consolation in this 
habit : it may lead us to self-knowledge ; 
for it is a curious fact that the faults 
which strike us most prominently in 

[65] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Others are invariably those of which we 
have an unconscious inheritance. It is 
a law of nature like that by which any 
one whom we can see in a mirror may 
see us in the same mirror, though we 
may not see ourselves. 

But the art of criticism is not always 
an interior operation. Indeed, if nursed 
within, it often oozes out and becomes 
ill-natured. The most unlovable peo- 
ple, though they are often well-inten- 
tioned people, are those who are per- 
petually engaged in the ideal task of 
setting others right. They are like the 
flats in music, when these are out of 
place or needlessly multiplied; their 
wailings keep the melody in a perpetual 
minor key. Saints never do this sort 
of thing. They have a cheerful way of 

bearing the faults of others, or of 

1166] 



SHARPS. 



quietly setting the example of how things 
might be bettered, or of gently suggest- 
ing a different way. But they leave 
the ugly task of correcting the faults 
of others to superiors and monitors, 

A good deal more mischief, however, 
is done by the sharps, when they are 
out of place, that is, by those who vent 
their testy mood by criticism, by bitter 
words, smarting ridicule, — in short, by 
being sharp with their tongues. 

Parallel with the pride that indulges 
in the small ways of criticising others 
goes an aversion to being criticised. 
Now, there is nothing so valuable in all 
religious discipline as the genuine criti- 
cism which we can obtain of our actions. 
And why ? Because before we can 
correct ourselves we must know our- 
selves. This is not an easy matter. 

[67] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

The Greek philosopher placed the sum 
total of all possible knowledge in the 
adage: Know thyself, St. Augustine 
repeated forever his favorite prayer : 
Noverim te Domine — noverim me. "Let 
me know Thee, dear Lord; let me 
know myself!'* And as in the physical 
order, we cannot survey ourselves as 
perfectly as do those who look at 
us from without, so in the spiritual 
order, we can never obtain so true a 
view of ourselves as do those who with 
conscientious freedom, born of respon- 
sibility and love of God, examine our 
faults. Of course, if they know that 
we are sensitive and ugly about it, they 
will not correct us unless it be abso- 
lutely necessary ; hence, if we are wise, 
we will court and invite criticism, for 
it saves trouble, a world of trouble, of 

[68] 



OUR OWN NOTIONS. 

self-examination and — of saddest dis- 
appointment when we come to see our- 
selves as we are, at the hour of 
death. 

Next of kin to the aversion which 
shuns criticism and, therefore, correc- 
tion, is an inordinate attachment to our 
own ideas. Father Faber has said some- 
where that it is of faith that " when we 
are most sure to be in the right, we are 
surely in the wrong." Faithless science 
continually demonstrates the truth of 
this adage. Scientists were very sure 
at one time that the origin of life was 
to be found in spontaneous generation ; 
now they are just as sure of the contrary; 
namely, that every living thing comes 
from a germ — " omne vivum ex ovo." 

One other form of pride let us glance 

at : It is obstinacy of will. As a rule^ 

[69] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

where there is obstinacy, there is pro- 
portionate ignorance ; and that makes 
such cases almost hopeless, because it 
takes away the light which would make 
correction appear just and reasonable. 
Now, to say that a fault is incorrigi- 
ble is almost heresy. Surely nothing 
ought to be incorrigible in religion. 
Indeed, there is one remedy, perhaps 
the only one for such disease of the 
will. We have already met it at the 
opening of these musical studies. The 
remedy for a native tendency to obsti- 
nacy is obedience, blind, unhesitating 
obedience. If we have ever been seri- 
ously told that we are of an obstinate 
disposition — then let us ask no more 
questions. Let us simply resolve, once 
for all, that we shall go by rule, without 

consulting our feelings, without arguing, 

[70] 



OBSTINACY. 

without hesitation, but promptly, like 
soldiers in the line marching to battle: 

Theirs not to make reply; 
Theirs not to reason why; 
Theirs but to do— and die. 

Yes, die ! For that means victory and 
life inasmuch as we fulfil the holy will 
of God, who with absolute certainty 
rewards docility and obedience. 

And, indeed, obedience is the grand 
means to break our will, to combat the 
pride that took its origin from the Non 
servianiy " I will not serve," of an angel. 
That same pride finds its way into clois- 
ter and sanctuary. It has wrecked 
giants of Christian knowledge and mor- 
tification, like Tertullian, in their very 
pursuit of holiness. It has thrown a 
doubt about the ultimate fate of reform- 
ers, like Savonarola, who spent their 

[71] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

lives for the cause of righteousness. It 
continually grieves the Sacred Heart 
of Jesus as He reviews with unequalled 
tenderness the chosen members of His 
own virgin train, because it retards the 
joyous movement heavenward of those 
whom he longs to bring into His king- 
dom. 

If the obedience of the religious is 
called holy, it is so distinguished be- 
cause it is never sullen, never half- 
hearted^ never hesitating. It is constant, 
generous, joyous. It never halts in the 
face of difficulties, for it is capable of 
accomplishing everything. And why ? 
Because the moment the soul bends 
in likeness to the Divine Heart, that 
moment it is endowed with the divine 
power. 

There is a simple and beautiful 

[72] 



HIS EYE ON US. 



description of the happiness of Paradise 
in the seventeenth chapter of Ecclesi- 
asticus. After saying how God gave 
to our first parents a wondrous knowl- 
edge of good and evil, the old Hebrew 
Sage continues: "And He set His eye 
upon their hearts to show them the 
greatness of His works." So, too, our 
Lord has set His eye upon the hearts 
of His true religious. It is the eye of 
Jehovah, the eye of the Saviour, the eye 
that rested upon Peter and changed 
him into a saint ; the eye that day and 
night looks upon the world. And He 
calls upon us with ever such a longing 
gaze, answering our prayers with His 
lavish generosity, even while we half 
fancy that He is far away and hears us 
not. And in this gaze, through the 
veil that hangs over His Eucharistic 

[73] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Face, we find the solution to the one 
difficulty that remains — our temper, our 
native disposition, that makes us proud 
and obstinate, and will not let us bend 
in graceful obedience to the spirit and 
letter of our Rule. 

Amidst it all we cannot lose sight of 
the fact that prayer is our last resort. 
It is infallible. Not the prayer of the 
lip so much as the steady invocations 
that rise like incense from a heart burn- 
ing with desire of perfection, with the 
desire of being relieved of those habits 
which hinder us from giving our whole 
selves to God and rendering efficient 
service to our neighbor. Even if our 
faults be not mere transient results 
of impulse, but arise from some per- 
versity of nature which had been allowed 
to grow into a habit, before we recog- 

[74] 



A CLEAN HEART! 

nized its humiliating power over us, 
and which dominates our actions like 
an evil spirit, we still have ample reason 
for confidence in the loving power of 
our Lord, who can change the whole 
nature, and drive out the evil, if we 
only appeal to Him with humble con- 
fidence. Cor mundum crea in me Deus! 
" Create a new heart in me, O God ! " 

Organ Pipes and Stops. 

In the process of tuning the grand 
organ to which we compared the Relig- 
ious Life, we began by examining the 
separate keys. This helped us to as- 
certain whether the tones which these 
keys sounded were correct and clear, 
and also whether there was not some 
mechanical defect, perhaps a warping or 
a swelling of the material, which might 

[75] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

prevent the ivory and ebony keys from 
answering properly to the delicate touch 
of the Artist who controls the instru- 
ment. These mechanical defects served 
us as a symbol of those faults of pride 
and obstinacy which are a danger to the 
peace of the Religious Life, because 
the lack of prompt response to the law 
of obedience whereby God indicates 
His holy will, destroys the harmony 
of united hearts and action in a com- 
munity. 

But the mechanism- of the organ 
does not entirely depend on the perfect 
working of the key-board , nor can the 
master, however skilled or willing he 
may be, produce any music from the 
polished row of keys without the co- 
operation of other important elements. 

Look at the organ. Above the 

[76] 



PIPES AND STOPS. 



manual board over which the hands of 
the player glide with ease, there is a 
long row of tubes or pipes, all disposed 
in groups of different sizes, but in 
regular order. They serve the purpose 
of receiving and passing along the cur- 
rents of air which produce the musical 
sounds. And on each side, within 
reach of the player^s hand, there are 
double rows of knobs or registers which 
can be pulled out. These are called 
stops. There is no sound from the 
organ until the player pulls out some 
of these stop-knobs. They open the 
small passages through which the air 
is forced into the organ pipes. In this 
way sounds like those from a flute or 
cornet or any other wind or reed in- 
strument, are produced simultaneously. 
Thus it is by means of the stops that 

[77] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

the quality and the pitch of the differ- 
ent notes are regulated, and unless these 
stops are in good order and can be 
pulled in and out with ease, the organist 
is helpless, for no matter how much 
you beat on the keys they are silent 
and seem useless. 

Now the pipes or reeds of the grand 
organ of the Religious Life are the 
Rules and Constitutions of an Order. 
It is through the Religious Rules that 
the Divine Spirit breathes His Will in 
regular order and in absolute corre- 
spondence with the will and purpose of 
Christ, the Master who presides over 
the organ of the Religious Community, 
ready to make use of our service for 
producing His heavenly melodies. As 
the pipes of an organ are fixed and so 

located that the air can pass through 

[78] 



OUR RULES. 

them at the call or motion of the 
organist, so the Rules of the Religious 
Institute are fixed and approved in a 
way which makes them the ordinary 
medium of communicating God's in- 
spirations and the breath of His Divine 
Will. 

But we saw that the air currents 
which pass through the pipes and reeds 
of the organ are operated by means of 
stops, which open the little valves 
attached to the pipes arranged in various 
groups. Just so are the Rules of the 
Religious Life made to work by means 
of stops which open the way to the 
inspirations and directions of the Holy 
Ghost, so that our holy Rule becomes 
the manifestation of the Divine Will 
in our regard. 

And what are these stops by which 
[79] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

oxxT heavenly Master operates the holy- 
Rule which carries the divine breathing, 
or the spirit of the Religious Life? 
They are nothing else but the mission 
or duty to which we are assigned, the 
place in which we are to stop. 

We all know that the Divine Organist 
from time to time pulls out the stops, 
that is. He gives us orders through our 
superiors to change our place and kind 
of duty. We are sent from the house, 
the company, or the work in which we 
got along splendidly, to another house, 
with different company and new duties. 
In the old place everything was in har- 
mony with our natural feelings, and 
nobody interfered with our notions ; 
but about this new appointment we 
don't know. Accordingly, sometimes, 

when the order to move comes to us, 

[80] 



OUR VOWS. 

we experience a sensation that prompts 
us to say : Why could not the superiors 
let me alone ? We feel a disagreeable 
foreboding that there will be trouble or 
at least a lack of comfort in the new 
situation. That foreboding is a warn- 
ing that something in us is wanting to 
a true religious vocation. Let us see 
what is the defect. 

We wear the habit of a religious and 
we have made, our profession — true; 
yet for all that we may be without 
religion. There is a good deal of de- 
lusion about the meaning of taking 
vows. When a novice, who did enter 
the convent with very elevated views 
of sanctity, has been kept for two years 
or more in a sort of private box near 
the altar, so that he or she might grow 
strong in the spirit of reflection and 

[81] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

become habituated to prayer, there is 

very little difficulty in being religious. 

The fledglings only get occasional 

glimpses of rough work actually done; 

for the older members of the order, in 

a spirit of charity and patience (for 

which they are as a rule specially 

selected), carry the main burdens, 

whilst they tutor the novices into the 

ways of their future religious duties. 

Then comes the day for taking the 

vows which are supposed to imply the 

actual sacrifices to which the candidate 

pledges fidelity for life. What vows 

are they ? Obedience, chastity, poverty ! 

They are grand acts of renunciation — 

written on parchment and made in all 

solemnity amid an assembled crowd of 

admirers, before the Bishop. And 

what do they entail upon the heroic 

[82] 



WHAT WE RENOUNCE. 



soul that pronounces them? This: 
first of all, she casts away the vanity of 
the world, in the shape of a satin dress 
specially made for the occasion. Then 
she sacrifices the beautiful tresses, which, 
in case they are needed, will grow again. 
And then she is permitted to live, rent- 
free, in a large apartment house; cooks, 
porters, maids of all work are duly 
provided ; she won't have to pay these, 
nor can they leave her at short notice. 
In fact, she will not have to trouble 
herself about bank accounts, or the 
wages question at all ; and if she needs 
money, she gets it brought her in a 
purse, with a chaperon to help in the 
shopping. She is not obliged to give 
alms, or fees, or audiences to disgrun- 
tled callers. She is relieved of all the 

tyranny of fashion in procuring season- 

[83] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

able dress goods ; is always provided 
with a most becoming suit, free of 
charge. The doctor comes if she needs 
him, and he has the good sense not to 
send her any bills. Everybody outside 
the community treats her as a lady. 
She gets credit in a sort of way for all 
the virtues which are practised by the 
members of the community in which 
she lives, and, indeed, for whatever 
distinguished the saints whom she is 
supposed to imitate ; and many people 
fairly coddle the dear heroic soul by 
their evidences of admiration and kind- 
ness. What on earth can any person 
this side of heaven want beyond this ? 
People of the world have to struggle 
for existence. If they have money, 
they can do no better than keep a good 

house, eat and drink moderately, and 

[84] 



THE BETTER PART. 

dress decently. If they desire peace of 
mind and health of body, they must 
enjoy these things with a certain 
amount of restraint ; but at best they 
can hardly ever be without anxiety 
about their fortunes and their future. 
They may find a boarding-house as 
respectable as our cloister, but none 
that is wholly free from troubles. They 
have ordinarily little help and less 
sympathy such as a religious experi- 
ences. The world is a hard task-master 
and a rude critic, even whilst it flatters. 
It comes to all this, that if seculars wish 
to guard themselves against remorse, 
misfortune, or disease, they must prac- 
tically observe the three vows, though 
they have never made them on parch- 
ment ; and they are obliged to stand by 
their daily duties, and choke down 

[85] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

resentment under much more trying 
circumstances than can be the case in 
a religious community, where spiritual 
motives are constantly suggested to the 
individual, and where ordinarily all 
burdens are lifted from the conscience 
that has the courage to make a con- 
fidante of a superior or monitor. 

So after all there is not so very much 
that is heroic or uncommon about our 
profession of poverty, which leaves us 
quite comfortable ; nor about our vow 
of chastity, which simply means putting 
a healthy restraint on our senses and 
avoiding the risks of married life; whilst 
our obedience is nothing more than 
prudent subjection to the will of 
another who tries to make our duty as 
agreeable to us as possible and carries 
half the work and all the burden of 

[86] 



CARRYING BURDENS. 

responsibility. Surely we cannot flatter 
ourselves that we are doing anything 
extraordinary, unless we are ready if 
need be to embrace the hardships of 
poverty — to meet the disagreeable 
burdens of our mission with the view 
of subduing our sensual nature; and 
to obey when obedience is not simply 
carrying out our own notions of right 
and expediency. The clerk in an office 
is ordered to stay at the place and 
engage in the work pointed out to 
him — and he readily obeys ; the soldier 
in the army, and the official in the civil 
service are assigned to a post — and they 
obey ; the religious is ordered to a poor 
mission, to an uncongenial work, and to 
associations which may require patience, 
charity, a keeping up of kindly judg- 
ment, and a good measure of their 

[871 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Master*s endless longanimity. Could 
it be anything but inconsistency and a 
low estimate of the obligation of the 
religious vocation which was meant to 
serve the common interests of God's 
kingdom, to hesitate, pout, grumble, or 
even protest against being placed where 
the Master needs us ? 

Some organs have sham stops^ just as 
they have sham pipes. They are meant 
for show. But our organ, the grand 
instrument under God's all-knowing 
care, does not permit such arrange- 
ments. Every stop is supposed to be 
active and to yield readily to the hand 
which moves it out of its socket, or 
to return to its place whenever it is 
not wanted. It follows therefore that 
a good religious, like an efficient stop, 
will go out of a house or a mission to 

[88] 



OUR COVENANT. 

another, and stop there, until recalled 
by the superior who acts as the hand 
of the Divine Organist in charge of the 
movement. "Stay here with Me!" 
said God to Moses !^ And the wise son 
of Sirach instructing those who would 
aim at perfection admonishes them to 
" stand firm in the lot before thee — be 
steadfast in thy covenant, and grow old 
in the work that is commanded thee/* ^ 
Our covenant is written not only upon 
the page of the volume which registered 
our vows, but in the recording Heart 
of the Spouse to whom we were wedded 
in everlasting bond of fidelity engaging 
us in a service of renunciation and self- 
denial. 

But we know all this, and it sounds 
tedious to repeat it. Nevertheless, we 

1 Deut. 5:31. 

2 Eccl. 17 : ai, and 11 : 21. 

[893 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

must convince ourselves that, unless we 

conform to the method of the organ 

stops, and permit our action to be 

regulated as to place, occupation, or the 

associates assigned us, we are mute keys^ 

and shall give forth no sound; and in 

that case it matters little how finely 

polished our ivory or ebony texture 

may appear on the surface of the 

manual or key-board. We have to 

cooperate with the work of the 

institute, making efforts to produce 

harmony, by toleration, by cheerful 

pocketing of our sensitiveness, by brisk 

readiness to assist in any task that needs 

our help, sometimes by being trod 

upon — for in all large organs there must 

he 'pedals that are operated by the feet. 

Unless we are prepared for all this, 

our existence on the key-board is a 

[90] 



VARIOUS STOPS. 

mere pretence, and we should be noth- 
ing better than boarders in a sort of 
free lodge establishment; whereas, we 
claim to bear Christ^s burden, and as a 
badge of our vocation actually carry a 
cross about us which tells the world 
that we have renounced the comforts 
of earth to take up daily the hardships 
of self-denial, of labor for the poor, 
the weak, and the ignorant — in which 
God meant to include the members of 
our order. Indeed our companions in 
the house where we live are the only 
ones to come near enough to us for a 
real test of our professed aim at virtue 
and perfection. 

If any of my readers, not conversant 
with the details of organ construction, 
should be tempted to look into a 

manual of instruction for playing the 

[91J 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

organ, he or she would discover that 
there are many kinds of stops; just as 
there are many kinds of places or 
houses, duties, associations to which 
religious may be assigned for service, 
and which may be styled their stops. 
There 2,x^ foundation and mutation stops. 
Tho^ foundation stops and mutation stops 
in religion supply the reason why cer- 
tain members are allowed to stay in the 
same place and others are moved about. 
The organ is built that way ; and hence 
no amount of questions "why?" — and 
of those creative inventions of the 
imagination called rash judgments — 
will bring any other answer but this, 
that we are out of order unless we 
conform to the arrangement of the 
superiors, who govern ; and that, right 

or wrong, our interference or assertion 

[92] 



MINOR STOPS. 

of self-will is sure to create a want of 
harmony, which displeases the Divine 
Master, who alone manages this sacred 
instrument. The Jesuits have inherited 
from the maker of their Rule an 
expression which characterizes the dis- 
position of a subject sent on any mis- 
sion at the command of the superior: 
Perinde ac cadaver — that is, they will 
let themselves be moved to any mission 
"like a dead body;" which dead body 
revives and quietly takes upon itself 
all the work it can stand, as soon as 
it gets to the place assigned. 

There are any number of minor stops 
to every good organ which help to 
make magnificent music when fully 
drawn out at the proper time. They 
have different names. On our organ 
some of them are : 

[93] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Stop — your natural attachment to 
material things (keep-sakes, books, 
patterns, etc.) 

Stop — your attachment to certain 
practices of devotion, when they inter- 
fere with the order of things around 
you. 

Stop — Your attachment to members 
of your family. The injunction of the 
Master: ^^He that does not leave . . ." 
is meant for nuns also. 

Stop — your manifestation of prefer- 
ences, attention for persons to whom 
you are drawn by favors or services or 
who please you by their natural gifts 
of disposition. 

Stop — your search for news. Nov- 
elties like " ragtime music " are not 
in the repertory of our Heavenly 

Organist. 

[94] 



THE PEDALS. 



But I hear a pious remonstrance: 
" Stop, please. We know it all from 
Rodriguez, and from the meditation 
books, and from the Rules." Very 
well. It would take too long, any way, 
to go through the whole list of stops^ 
for there are sixty-one for manual key- 
boards, which apply to religious who 
make no particular profession of seek- 
ing extraordinary humiliations. For 
the latter there are twenty to thirty 
extra stops to regulate the pedal key- 
board. These are only for the very 
lowly and humble servants of the Lord 
who hardly ever come into the light 
of day — the cloistered nuns and 
monks who labor in the sweat of their 
brows, content to contribute unseen to 
the magnificent harmony of Catholic 
charity. 

[95] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

But there is one arrangement to 
which we shall have to give a moment's 
attention, if things are to go right in 
the playing, later on. That one thing is 

The Swells. 

Probably the name is suggestive 
enough, so that the apparatus needs 
very little examination. The swells on 
an organ are a mechanical contrivance 
by which the loudness of tones may 
be varied, so that the sound of a note 
can be made to increase {crescendo) or 
decrease {diminuendo) gradually. This 
produces a fine effect in music, and 
gives power and emphasis to certain 
movements in the melody upon which 
the attention is settled. 

In a religious organ there is a cor- 
responding effect produced by well 

[96] 



GOD'S QUIET WAYS. 

regulated activity. This activity is 
stimulated by zeal, and the various 
forms of zeal are what I should call 
swells. Zeal has a tendency to swell 
without allowing itself to be regu- 
lated. And therein lies its danger. 
The most ordinary form of human zeal 
is to start in with a crescendo move- 
ment. Noise advertises. It forces at- 
tention from the sleepy and quiet folk. 
It rouses expectation — but, alas ! God*s 
ways are quiet ways. The zeal that 
begins with all the trumpets in full 
blast, and with a loud crescendo swell 
is sure to flag before long, and turn 
into an unlocked for diminuendo. It is 
a remarkable fact, in the history of all 
great and lasting movements for good, 
that they began very humbly, grew 

quietly, often out of apparent failures, 

[97] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE, 

and had nothing to indicate their power 
or future influence except that mark of 
vitality which showed that there was 
a growth which came from some prin- 
ciple or energy within. It is possible 
to bring together stones for a large pile 
in a much shorter space of time than 
it takes an acorn to spring its tiny 
sprout. But the one is a large dead 
mass, unproductive, often a hindrance 
to the planter, whilst the latter is the 
beginning of a series of living organ- 
isms that in the progress of ages, from 
millionfold multiplied seeds, create a 
forest, furnish ships and houses, and 
play their part in the great events of 
a world's industrial life. 

We like to create, to build, proba- 
bly because God, the Creator, fash- 
ioned us in His own likeness. The 

[98] 



APPEARANCES. 



world estimates its probabilities of suc- 
cess upon display, and hence we are 
easily moved to let our zeal for de- 
veloping our work follow the direction 
of outward show of success. That is 
an error, and it endangers the spirit 
of religious life, just as the accumula- 
ted load of heavy material with which 
we build is apt to smother the living 
plant that grows under it. 

Yet whilst it is a deceptive princi- 
ple that a fine appearance is an essen- 
tial element producing an increase of 
the means by which the work of our 
Institute will prosper heavenward, we 
must not suppose that religious com- 
munities are to neglect those provisions 
for the educational and charitable ne- 
cessities of their charge which answer 

to the needs and demands of modern 
.. L.cfC. [99] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

economic life. But there ought to be 
no disproportion between the means 
and the attempt. All the religious 
orders, without exception, that have 
survived their foundations and become 
a power by means of the evangelical 
counsels, began their great works with 
an almost shocking disregard for appear- 
ances or impressions. They simply 
worked, worked, worked. And some- 
how their work arrested the attention 
of those who could at once facilitate 
their efficiency in a wider circle. Few 
of the founders of our orders not 
mendicant ever begged. They simply 
went about doing what they could for 
the charges they had taken up, improv- 
ing their souls and the souls of others 
in a quiet, unostentatious way. Then 
came the influence of thoughtful people, 

[lOO] 



OUR SUCCESS. 

and the money came, and with it 
members flocked to the Institute to 
have a share in the noble work of 
personal sanctification and charity. Out 
of this grew that sort of success which 
leaves its immortal imprint upon the 
history of religious achievement. 

But enough has been said about this 
arrangement of the swells which, if 
only properly managed, adds to the 
beautiful expression of the musical 
theme. Its effect depends on the mo- 
deration with which it is managed, with 
due regard to time, and place, and 
circumstances. It is hardly meant to 
be used by beginners. 

The Scale. 

We have spent a considerable amount 
of time in examining the organ, first 

[lOl] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

that we might ascertain whether it 
needed tuning. Our Lord, who indi- 
cates to us by the touch of His divine 
hand the keys which sound the various 
notes, is Himself our guide in this 
process of tuning. 

Next we have seen how He man- 
ages the stops and the swells, in order 
that He might rouse His creatures to 
proper action and well-controlled zeal. 

Let us assume that this great instru- 
ment has, under our Lord's direction, 
been restored to perfect order. If, as 
a result of His scrutinizing discipline, 
it has happened that a key here and 
there received a little hard thumping, it 
was all intended to make us realize one 
primary fact in conventual life — namely, 
that the most essential quality required 

in a member of a religious community 

[102] 



HUMILIATIONS. 

is the readiness to yield on all occasions 
to the necessary pressure of humilia- 
tions. Humility is the key of the 
Gate of Heaven. But humility can 
never come to us except through 
humiliations. God may bestow on us 
as a birth-gift a gentle disposition ; He 
may preserve in us the spirit of simplic- 
ity, and both these qualities of nature 
are indeed the soil and atmosphere of 
humility ; but He can never give us the 
virtue of humility. That virtue must 
be acquired^ must be learnt : " Learn 
from Me that I am meek and humble 
of heart ! " And the learning means 
effort, and the effort consists in training 
ourselves to bear humiliations. The 
things that are most hard upon our 
sensitiveness ; the things that we feel 

most repugnance to do when duty and 

[103] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

common sense, or the better custom of 
charity and urbanity, prescribe them for 
uSj — the doing of these things is that 
which helps us to humility by the 
shortest and hence the easiest path. 
There is a longer and in the end a harder 
path to humility. I will show it to you. 
When we have shirked habitually the 
little tasks and acts that hurt our sensi- 
tiveness ; when we have managed for a 
long time to avoid the things that cause 
unpleasant grating on our feelings and 
prejudices; when we have found and 
hold a way of escaping by arguments 
and manoeuvres through small crooked 
ways, certain persons whom we dislike, 
or certain duties which don't particularly 
cover us with glory, then our superiors, 
or those who have charge of us, or are 

connected with us in daily life, gradually 

[104] 



SENSITIVE TEMPER. 

get accustomed to humor us quietly. 

They let us have our way for peace's 

sake. " She doesn't like it, Mother," 

or " She is too sensitive, we must spare 

her," or "We don't know how she 

would take it if we sent her : she might 

make a scene, and compromise the 

house," or " She is a little sulky to-day, 

and it would hardly do to ask her " — 

this is what our friends, though not 

within our hearing, say to each other. 

And we, being thus shielded from the 

test and trial which might reveal to us 

our infirmity, imagine that we are near- 

ing the gate that opens Paradise. Never 

a bit ruffled, always so composed, ever 

doing what we are asked — oh, we are 

grand ! — But it never occurs to us that 

nobody asks us to do what we dislike to 

do. Our superiors and companions 

[105] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

spare us that experiment, especially 
when they have once or twice been 
witnesses of the quality of our temper, 
which in some natures is noisily explo- 
sive and in others quietly petrifying. 
Yet if our human superiors and brethren 
spare us, unto our own loss, not so the 
Divine Organist. He waits a long and 
silent while, and then He rouses us 
from our lethargy by a sudden shake. 
What self-inflicted penalty did not 
attempt to cure, that He, in His love 
for us, cures by a species of sufferings 
in which He shows us what we are. 
We had imagined that we could avoid 
humiliations ; had wrapped ourselves in 
a mantle of self-approval that did not 
permit criticism to make us blush or 
to confuse us; we had enjoyed peace 
by reason of a permanent sign-board 

[io6] 



THE LONG WAY. 



put Up at the entry to our spiritual 
preserves, which told everybody : Don't 
say anything to hurt my feelings ; 
don't ask me to do anything that goes 
against my grain, or makes me stoop 
too low, or reach too high. I am 
sensitive, and Father Faber says some- 
where that saints are made out of sen- 
sitive stuff — so don't apply here with 
your humiliations ; they are not needed ! 
Now the sufferings which undo this 
species of ingrained spiritual self-indul- 
gence, and which God has devised for 
that purpose, are of a peculiarly trying 
sort. I said that when we avoided the 
short way of braving disagreeable things, 
and of waging war against our sensi- 
tiveness, God finds Himself forced to 
lead us by a long way. He does with 

us what men do with horses that balk 

[107] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

at certain places in the road. Thev 
lead the animal round about^ or make 
it thoroughly tired and hungry, so that 
it forgets the imaginary evil through 
the pressure of a more real need. The 
long way by which God leads us in 
the given case is the path of sickness 
and pain — either of body or soul. 
About the humiliating power of the 
former I need say nothing. As to the 
latter, the agony of a sick heart or 
soul, it IS a way which usually begins 
with abnormal scrupulosity, widens grad- 
ually into spiritual darkness and desola- 
tion of soul. It is a pain so torturing 
to the spirit that often it drives the 
soul near to despair, and it bears with 
it horrors which give us some concep- 
tion of what hell may be without any 
fire, simply as a result of our missing 

[io8] 



THE COST OF IT. 

the light of God*s dear presence. No 

more of it here. It is an ugly subject 

to dwell on when we should discourse 

rather on the harmony of our religious 

life; but I had to mention it in order 

to warn those who believe that humility 

is a gift like those ordinary endowments 

which render our natural disposition 

more or less agreeable in the eyes of 

others. 

Humility as a virtue (and before it 

becomes a habit by frequent repetitions 

of humiliations) requires personal efforts, 

personal courage, and a determined 

readiness to meet humiliations as a 

condition of our earthliness. Those 

who imagine that this delightful virtue 

of the Sacred Heart may enter their 

souls by a sort of infusion, or even as 

a return for prayer (without simulta- 

[109] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

neous waging of war on our sensitive- 
ness), are mistaken. If we may judge 
from ordinary experience, it would take 
more prayers to get the right grain 
of humility into a heart that has given 
lodging to the habit of pride than a 
whole community can say in a lifetime. 
This is strong language, but it is true. 
God gives us, in answer to our earnest 
prayer, sufficient grace to take and 
practise humiliations, but humility is 
quite another thing; it implies a con- 
scious appreciation, a sort of satisfac- 
tion at being humiliated. Not that it 
does not always pain us to be humil- 
iated; it would not be humiliation if 
it did not smart ; but one may learn 
to love pain for a higher gain, or for 
the sake of some beloved one who is 

dearer to us than we are to our dear 

[no] 



LOVE OF HARDSHIPS. 



selves. It is the way a soldier comes 
to love the hardships of war that he 
might share in the victory for his 
country ; it is the way a mother loves 
her child, ready to give her health and 
life for its preservation. Such love 
must be cultivated by endurance, and 
the pounding and beating we get in 
religion as a school of correction is 
the way to cultivate it. Many a con- 
fession, thoughtful, earnest, resolute ; 
many a retreat which sharpens the 
edge of our self-inspection, is needed 
to make us even admit that for us 
individually there is need of humiliation 
because there is need of humility. 

If, then, the tuning has the effect 
of teaching us that there is something 
wrong about our religious life, and that 

in order to set it right we must bestir 

[III] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

ourselves, making some sacrifice of our 
self-will and of our comfort, we shall 
have gained a good deal in the way 
of rightly preparing for the grand 
symphony concert which will be our 
joy in heaven. 

However, we cannot be tuning all 
the time ; that, indeed, would be tire- 
some. So we must go farther in our 
endeavor to learn something. 

The » first thing the Master does, 
when the organ has been tuned, is to 
run his fingers over the keys in regu- 
lar order. " His volant touch, instinct 
through all proportions, low and high," 
flies up and down the resonant board. 
He plays the scale. It is not music 
exactly, but only a sort of trial of the 
sounds and chords. Ordinarily the 
scale is played by beginners for the 

[112] 



SCHOOL OF CORRECTION. 

purpose of practice. Our Lord needs 
no practice. He only tests the sound 
of our heart. Still if He does not stand 
in need of practice, we surely do. He 
must go over the scale for our sakes, 
so that imitating His method we may 
get into the right ways, and by dint of 
repetition attain that perfection which 
belongs to our state, and which is the 
result of constant rising upon the ladder 
of the evangelical virtues. For the 
Religious Life is not only a school of 
correction, where all defects are elim- 
inated by persistent study of ourselves, 
and by warfare against our passions and 
wayward inclinations ; but the Religious 
Life is likewise a workshop of perfec- 
tion. In fact, the two things — namely, 
correction and perfection — are only two 
names for the same thing ; for perfection 

["3] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

IS attained by means of correction, just 
as the beauty of a marble statue results 
from the judicious strokes of the chisel 
which knocks off the corners and the 
roughness. 

Now just as the keys of the organ 
represent a religious community which 
seeks perfection by means of correction , 
so may we regard these same keys as 
representing the scale or ladder by which 
this perfection is gradually reached. 
The scale is a very commonplace 
exercise, and a little bit tedious. But 
it is quite necessary to practise it con- 
stantly for a long time, every day, and 
sometimes for several hours a day. 
Even old players find it good exercise 
for the fingers frequently to run over 
the scale. 

The scale (diatonic) is a succession 
[114] 



THE OCTAVE. 

of eight notes. There is a certain 
prescribed order about it. It represents 
gradual progress, and thus is, as has 
already been said, an image of the pro- 
gressive stages toward perfection made 
by the individual soul. Perfection in 
virtue, as in music, is at first slow 
work. We must be patient with our- 
selves; later on we might take our 
part in the sonatas and those magnificent 
inspirations of genius which awaken 
our longings for that heavenly paradise, 
of whose joys they are faint echoes 
coming in snatches to our poor earth. 
In the ordinary scale the first and 
the last notes, called octave, have the 
same name, and the same accord ; 
with only this difference, that the last 
note is much higher in pitch. There 

are quite a number of octaves on the 

[115] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

keyboard, so that we can play several 
scales. But we shall take only one 
for the time, beginning with the easiest 
of all, which is called the natural scale. 
The octave begins with C and it ends 
with C The Charity of the Christian 
and the Charity of the Religious are 
the two terms of its whole extent. 
Between these two, the first C and the 
octave C, there lie a number of virtues 
leading us by successive steps from 
natural, or Common Charity y to Christ- 
like Charity. St. Paul enumerates the 
various qualities of true Charity 
(i Cor. 13). His words sound like 
touches upon the strings of a harp 
which he holds close to his bosom ; 
one after the other he strikes the 
chords, lingering over the sounds as 

though they issued from his heart 

[116] 



ST, PAUL'S CHARITY. 

rather than from the instrument. 
"Charity is patient — is kind; charity 
envieth not — dealeth not perversely — 
is not puffed up ; charity is not am- 
bitious — seeketh not her own — is not 
provoked to anger — thinketh no evil ; 
rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth 
with the truth — beareth all things — 
believeth all things — hopeth all things 
— endureth all things. Charity never 
falleth away., whether prophecies shall 
be made void, or tongues shall cease, 
or knowledge shall be destroyed; there 
remain faith, hope, and charity, these 
three; but the greater of these is 
charity." What a wealth of sweet 
accords is encompassed by this eulogy 
of the virtue of charity ! 

But we must not forget our scale, 

despite the fact that the subject is (like 

[117] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

the practice) a little monotonous after 
you have gone over it a few times. 
Perhaps we might vary it a Httle by 
adopting the method of a dear, gentle 
monk who lived many centuries (nearly 
ten) ago, in an Italian town of the 
beautiful valley through which the 
Arno runs ; 1 mean the town of 
Arezzo, where Petrarch was born and 
sang his happy sonnets in after years. 
The good monk's name was Guido. 
He was very fond of music ; indeed, a 
great master, both of its art and science. 
Like many of us, he had to teach — 
mostly music, also other things; but 
with all of them together he wanted to 
teach piety. Naturally he began with 
the scale, which he considered the basis 
of good practice in singing and playing. 
Since his pupils in the old Tuscan con- 

[ii8j 



BROTHER GUIDO. 

vent were all aiming at a life of per- 
fection and saw in their studies and 
practice of music only a means of 
glorifying God, it occurred to Brother 
Guido of Arezzo to change the names 
of the notes, so that they might recall 
some devout thoughts to those who 
pronounced them. Instead of calling 
the notes by the letters of the alphabet, 
C^-D-E^ and so forth, he gave them 
their names from some verses of a 
beautiful hymn in honor of St. John 
the Baptist, which he was in the habit 
of singing whilst his fingers were 
running over the scale on his harp. 
Here are the verses ; they are Latin : 

Ut queant laxis 
iJesonare fibris 
ifcf/ra gestorum 
FavrmW tuorum, 
Sohe poUuti 
Lahn reatum, 
Sanct& Joannes ! 

[119] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

These lines, addressed to St. John, 
mean : " Chasten, dear saint, our hearts 
and lips; and attune our lyres, in order 
that we, thy servants, may chant thy 
noble life with sweet accord/* 

Now, the first syllables of these 
verses became the names by which the 
keys or notes of the scale were known 
— Ut-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Sa, and the 
eighth was Uty repeated for the octave. 
This system had, as already suggested, 
the advantage that it was calculated to 
arouse pious thoughts and aspirations 
in the young Benedictine novices of 
Guido's school and choir. 

I take these names for our scale, the 

scale of charity, with only the slight 

changes by which later practice adapted 

the musical system of the good monk 

Guido to modern convenience. For 

[120] 



EXERCISE. 

[//, the first note, musicians of to-day 
use more commonly Do^ which is some- 
what easier in singing, because it ends 
in a vowel. Hence, instead of calling 
the notes C,-D,-E, and so forth, as we 
have been accustomed, let us take 
Brother Guidons method and call them 
Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Si (Sa)-Do. 

Do, Re, Mi. 

When we practise the scale, we run 
the fingers of the right hand up and 
down ; but how ? There are iivt 
fingers, and they have to strike in 
regular succession eight notes. The 
way we do (in the C scale) is to strike 
Do-Re-Mi with the first three fingers 
in order ; then we bend back the 
fingers and strike the next note with 
the first finger (thumb), following up 

[121] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

the remaining four notes with the four 
remaining fingers. In other words, we 
cover the scale in two parts, or sections ; 
first, we take three notes as our basis, 
and then we take the other ^yq notes 
by putting all the fingers of our whole 
hand to it. Get somebody to show 
you how it is done. Nearly all the 
nuns know. . . . Just so we ascend 
the scale of Christ's charity in two 
parts — first, by settling upon three 
general principles : 

Do Re Mi 

Do ! Renounce I Minister I 

This means : Be active ! Deny your- 
selves ! Serve others ! 

On general principles, therefore, our 
charity must be active; of course, I 

mean intelligently active: You know 

[122] 



CHARITY BY PROXY. 

that it is quite possible for persons to 
have what is called a charitable dis- 
position without much actual charity. 
Such people are good at approving 
charitable undertakings ; they can sug- 
gest any amount of things that might 
be done; they even direct them and 
collect money for them from others. 
Most of the time, however, they content 
themselves with encouraging such things 
and lamenting their inability to take a 
hand ; or they find, at the last moment, 
that rheumatism, or a dreadful cold, or 
some disastrous freak of the elements 
has interfered with their most charitable 
intentions. Such there are in the world. 
Ordinarily, this class of saints is not 
disposed to enter religion. But when, 
by some misunderstanding of them- 
selves and of their spiritual guardians, 

[123] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

they do pass through the convent gate 
and the novitiate, they will make them- 
selves conspicuous in one of two ways. 
They are advocates of words, of 
promises, of suggestions. They are 
always interested and seemingly active; 
but if you count up results, there is 
nothing done. They might accomplish 
a world of good if they had not so 
many schemes for others^ which par- 
ticular characteristic gives to their zeal 
the air of disinterested charity, without 
the essential quality of Do ! 

But there is another category of 
these saints that fail in the exercise of 
our scale by omitting the Do. They 
incline the other way. They really 
don*t make many words at any time. 
Theirs is a sort of contemplative mood 

of charity, waiting for eternal rest, 

[124] 



DEAD WEIGHTS. 

Yet they are equally disinterested. 
They don't mind how much others 
have to flit around and worry for their 
sakes, either to do the things left un- 
done or unfinished, on account of their 
tranquil sanctity, or because it is neces- 
sary to make them comfortable so as to 
prevent dirges and lamentations which 
fit in quite well with the restful piety 
of such dispositions. Religious of this 
kind are very hard to manage. It is 
not quite their own fault that they are 
what they are ; but they are in the 
wrong place in a religious community, 
unless some new order outside the Do 
scale can be found or founded where 
ravens provide bread and butter, and 
some other things not included in the 
provisions miraculously sent to some 
of the holy anchorites. At the same 

[125] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

time, there is no class of devout people 
so endowed with the apparent halo of 
thoughtfulness, abandonment to God*s 
Providence, quiet self-possession, and 
general restfulness, as these dear an- 
gelics who never consciously make a 
disturbance, and never change their 
ways. Alas ! they are like dead weights 
in the road of spiritual progress to a 
community. They never realize that 
they were created to win the kingdom 
of heaven by violence and by labor 
and self-denial. Unlike those who are 
perpetually thinking about others, but 
never doing for others, they are neither 
thinking nor doing. They are too 
tired for that. It would seem they 
were born tired and never got quite 
rested. So they have been all along 
waiting for a good doze, which they 

[126] 



THE RESTFUL MOOD. 

are apt to keep on wanting, — who 
knows, — even after purgatory has 
begun ; although the hot floors there 
may make them hustle about. As I 
said, they are not wicked — that would 
require some conscious energy ; and 
they are ordinarily of good will, which 
is the one hopeful feature that gives 
them the prospect of ultimately attain- 
ing what they so much long for — 
eternal rest in heaven. 

If you ask me how such persons 
ever find their way into an active 
order, when there are so many con- 
templative institutes naturally inviting 
their patronage, I should answer that 
the latter are as a rule more cautious 
in their diagnosis of the particular 
quality of piety which applicants with 

this restful disposition exhibit, before 

[127] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

admission to the community is given 
the latter. It may seem odd, but it 
is true, nevertheless, that piety and 
laziness are easily confounded in cer- 
tain natures. You see, it is this way. 
Young folk, such as a modest-looking 
girl or a quiet boy, in a Christian 
family, unless they are exceptionally 
circumstanced, are apt to be helped 
along by everybody during the first 
years of their lives. If, through lack 
of animal spirits, they don't do any 
serious mischief as they grow up, people 
will say of the girl, " She's a regular 
saint," or, " She would look lovely in 
a veil," or, in the case of the boy, " He 
is a regular Aloysius," or, " He ought 
to be a Jesuit." The young innocents 
are carried along on the wings of pop- 
ular favor by their immediate friends ; 

[128] 



RESTFUL WAYS. 

they are not allowed to do anything 
for themselves, except perhaps to go 
to church often, which is moderate 
exercise. So the habit of restfulness 
grows and the delicate frame shapes 
itself accordingly, until peace and con- 
tentment and moderation shine out of 
countenance and movement. Now the 
youth and the maiden feel that under 
such considerations the earth is not 
good enough for them ; and the thought 
is of .course right, provided it proceeds 
from a proper estimate of eternal things 
and from a sense of one's heavenly 
destiny. But the "eternal destiny" 
is forgotten in this case. At all events 
our young saints have heard or read 
that religion is the abode of rest for 
the weary pilgrim of earth. Hence 

their thoughts go out to some convent 

[129] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

or monastery where they may take 

refuge from the wicked world. To their 

inexperienced imagination, the cloister 

is an abode where there is no business 

bu5tle or workaday noise, no dust or 

dirt, so that it is never necessary for 

people to tuck up their sleeves. The 

nuns always look so clean and neat, 

as if their laundry work were done in 

heaven ; and as for the monks, if they 

don't always seem very prim and tidy, 

it is just as good an argument for rest, 

since it is an evidence that there are 

no collars or coifs or gimps to be 

washed or ironed. The thought of 

getting the bliss of earth and heaven 

so nicely combined, of finding in a 

religious house a sort of depot where 

the inmates are provided with a spiritual 

carriage, like that of Elias, to take them 

[130] 



THE SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR. 

to heaven, and that on zephyrs, with- 
out shaking them out of their gentle 
doze during the interval, is deliciously 
attractive. So they drift that way. They 
consult, of course, a spiritual director. 
He encourages the design, unless he 
has positive reason to think the young 
devotees are moved by premature 
enthusiasm ; a thing which seems out 
of the question here, because of the 
natural repose of the applicants. He 
gives them a letter of recommendation, 
in which he praises their fathers and 
mothers and also the candidates' pious 
endeavor to give themselves to God. 
The letter concludes with a few con- 
ventional phrases of hopeful assurance, 
springing from the conviction that the 
superior of the convent will have time 

to find out all that is required before 
[131] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

the final profession is made. Religious 
superiors who trust these recommen- 
dations more than their personal expe- 
rience warrants may have to blame 
themselves. Confessors are not sup- 
posed to be omniscient, no matter how 
nice they are. God has reserved that 
gift to Himself. . . . When the young 
candidates have passed some weeks 
within the convent, they begin to sus- 
pect two things : First, that they may 
have to Do something before long, 
if they wish to earn and retain the title 
of religious as a preliminary to that 
sanctity which is the only passport to 
the rest and joy of Paradise ; and, 
secondly, that the superior and others, 
including even the chaplain, and the 
porter who usually knows everything 

else, are all wofully ignorant or mali- 

[132] 



IGNORING GENIUS. 

clously oblivious of the good qualities 

for which the newcomer was celebrated 

in his or her family. Outside in the 

wicked world people knew how to 

admire virtue, especially when it came 

so naturally and gracefully as in this 

case; but here in the convent people 

seem to be pretty ignorant or dull of 

perception, and one gets no credit or 

praise; in fact, one often has to do 

things and let others get the credit for 

them, or to take a snub for attempting 

to get credit. The new novice has 

resolved to paint something or write 

poetry for Reverend Mo therms feastday, 

and offers her services ; the Mistress 

says : " Never mind, dear. Scrub the 

blackboard which our good Lay Sister 

Virida spent an hour this morning (and 

a can of oil) in polishing. But do it 

[133] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

quickly, dear, before the children come 
in for arithmetic." It is a ruthless way 
of killing genius ; but it is the way of 
benighted Mistresses in the school of 
correction called a Religious House, 
where genius seems to be of no 
account. 

We cannot dwell longer on this note, 
and probably it is unnecessary — though 
a good deal more could be said on the 
subject. Anyhow, to be inactive in a 
Religious House is against the prin- 
ciple of charity : that is the thought we 
have to keep in mind. 

Re. 

The second fundamental principle of 
Christian charity is i^^nunciation. In- 
deed, it is the very essence of religion. 

[134] 



HEARTSTRINGS. 

Every page of the Following of Christ 
is a repetition of the injunction of our 
Divine Master: " He who would come 
after Me, let him deny himself, take up 
his cross daily, and follow Me." It 
implies a willingness, a readiness to set 
aside those comforts, to cut off those 
avenues of flattery, to separate from 
those friends and companions that hold 
our heartstrings tied to the earth, 
whilst our profession and our move- 
ment are intended to be heavenward. 

But who of us does not know it ? 
We hear it every day in one form or 
another. What we need only is to 
Doy to reduce to practice this injunc- 
tion of self-denial which is the second 
rung in our ladder to heaven. Yes ; 
the second key in our Do scale is 

i^^nunciation. 

[135] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Ml. 

The third quality upon which charity 
rests is represented, as already indicated, 
by the third note in the scale. It is the 
spirit of iVf/nistry. The Christian life 
is a service, a ministry, in a twofold 
sense. First of all, we are to serve 
God. He is our Lord and our Judge 
as well as our Redeemer and Rewarder. 
Hence we owe Him subjection, and it 
is our wisest policy to give Him our 
best service. He will not forget any 
neglect on our part, but He will re- 
member with magnificent generosity 
every token of affectionate obedience to 
His wishes. If He is severe with the 
servant who ties up his talents in a 
napkin, lacking industry. He repays a 
hundredfold the service of him who 

doubles his capital of talents. 

[136] 



GOD'S SUBSTITUTES. 

To be ready to serve God ought to 
be comparatively easy, when we know 
Him. Great and generous lords are 
pleasant masters, especially when they 
are not always at home, letting us have 
a good deal of liberty in the house we 
inhabit. And although God is really 
everywhere. He does not intrude His 
vigilant commands and eyes upon us in 
the way earthly masters are apt to do ; 
hence we feel a kind of security, as if 
He were far away. 

Still He has left some substitutes in 

His place, with the command that we 

serve them like Himself. With these 

we do not get on so easily. Our entire 

trouble is therefore with this substitute 

service. " Be ye subject to man for 

God's sake, not only to the good and 

gentle, but to the fro ward also ! " says 

[137] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

the Apostle of the Gentiles. But then 
he spoke to servants. Yes ; but he 
supposed every Christian to be willing 
to be another's servant. Our Saviour, 
from whom St. Paul drew all his inspi- 
rations and instructions, on the eve of 
His death, had said to His Apostles, 
as He washed their feet : " You call 
Me Master, and Lord: and you say 
well, for so I am. If then I, your 
Master and Lord, wash your feet, you 
must also wash one another's feet." 

The washing of feet was the service 
of hospitality and an indication of that 
charity which is preeminently kind ; not 
with the kindness of condescension, but 
with the kindness of humility, which 
bends to the neighbor and the stran- 
ger, because it sees in them the repre- 
sentatives of Christ : " What you have 
' [138] 



THE WRONG MINISTRY^ 

done to the least of these, you have 
done to Me." 

Probably I should say a word about 
this kindness, which constitutes the mar- 
row of Christian service, and is therefore 
inseparable from the true ministry of 
the religious life. 

It is quite possible for us to be ready 
and obliging servants of others and yet 
to fail utterly in fulfilling the service 
or ministry of Christian charity toward 
them. Take what we could call an 
exceptionally good and able religious, 
who is self-denying, mortified, and 
active. Fine schools, convents, asylums, 
and so forth, attest his or her zeal and 
efficiency ; and all this has been done 
with great labor and without any self- 
interest or personal gain, in view of the 

fact that an order from the Provincial 

[139] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 

or General may remove this religious 
at any moment from the locality and 
from the rank of manager. What the 
latter had in mind all along was to 
serve others, to make them as comfort- 
able as the religious rule and the spirit 
of the order permit. Yet such a reli- 
gious may lack the essential quality of 
ministry contemplated in our scale of 
charity, because he or she lacks the 
spirit of kindness. Indeed, we might be 
wonderfully mortified and be very gifted 
people, whom the world loves to style 
" saints ; ** we might teach with the 
mellifluous power of an Ambrose or a 
Chrysostom ; might deliver our bodies 
to be burnt — and all this from pure 
motives of a faith that could move 
mountains ; yet our service of God 

might still fall very short, because of 

[140] 



QUALITY OF KINDNESS. 

the lack of kindness in our ministry 
of charity. There are religious, holy 
people, not canonized, who, as Father 
Faber says somewhere, would convert 
ten where they now only lessen the 
prejudices of one, if to their uncommon 
graces they would add a little common 
kindness. And that which makes char- 
ity kind is the manner, the genial way, 
and the thoughtfulness that accompany 
the disinterested act. Kindness is never 
querulous ; it is considerate ; it watches 
for opportunities ; it falls like the dew 
of heaven, gently, and cools, and helps 
the growth, and has a fair sparkle' in 
the sunlight. 

But we must go on, though I may 
have to mention this fundamental qual- 
ity of kindness as part of true charity 

again briefly. 

[141J 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 



e have sounded 




Do Re 


-Mi 


Do — Renounce - 


— Minister. 



When we have these three principles 
well fixed in our minds, we may go on 
with our exercise, in the hope of becom- 
ing capable of following our Lord, so as 
to render ourselves fit to accompany 
Him at the grand symphony concert 
amid the angelic choirs in heaven. 

Fa, Sol, La, Si, Do. 

There remain still five notes in the 
octave, which we must at least rapidly 
touch before we come to the conclusion 
of our scale. 

Out of the threefold duty to do, to 

renounce, and to serve, which we have 

thus far considered, there grow five 

[142] 



FIVE VIRTUES. 

virtues. Perhaps I should call them 
rather qualities or modes of virtue, since 
they consist not so much in what we do 
as in the way we do things. Here they 
are : Steadiness^ Faithfulness^ Joy fulness^ 
Sisterly Spirit (Community Spirit), and 
finally Chris f s Spirit^ which is the last 
and highest note of our scale, that is, of 
the active life of Christian charity with 
which we began. 

But as our study opened with humil- 
ity and went as far as renunciation and 
self-denial, I am sure it would be rather 
conceited, and not quite in harmony 
with our object, if we were now to dwell 
particularly on our virtues. So I shall 
take the faults or some of the faults 
that are opposed to the virtues by which 
we rise in the scale of religious or 

Christ-like perfection. 
[143] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

To Steadiness is opposed — fickleness, 
moodiness, inconsistency, irregularity, 
wanton desire of change, fancy. Did 
I S2ij fancy? Yes. 

Fa. 

This will do — Fa ; we can remember 
it by the first syllable. A religious who 
has fancies is a difficult subject to an- 
alyze, especially if a woman. I have 
mentioned fickleness, moodiness, in- 
consistency, irregularity, or anxiety for 
change — all of which defects partake 
of this quality and have their root in 
fancy. A religious might take a fancy 
to a child in the school — and thus 
withdraw her heart from God. She 
might fancy that her abilities are under- 
rated, or else that the Superior-General 

has heard about them and only keeps 

[144] 



UNCHECKED IMAGINATION. 

her in petto with a view to have her 
establish new foundations that would 
eclipse the glory of all previous under- 
takings in the order. She might fancy 
that some Sister has a grudge against 
her, or an admiration for her ; or, 
indeed, a thousand other things possible 
to our poor self-conceited nature. But 
whatever they are, these fancies proceed 
from an unchecked imagination and an 
unbalanced judgment. And from this 
condition spring endless fruitless desires 
to do and to undo. Such desires are 
disastrous to interior peace and to 
exterior order, both of which results 
make it impossible for charity to grow, 
not only in the soul of the religious 
who harbors them but in its neighbor- 
hood also. 

What is the remedy ? 

[U5] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 

Give no freedom to your imagina- 
tion, to day-dreams, to hopes of being 
employed or noticed, to curiosity as to 
what others think of you. Say: " God 
leads me : His holy will is sure to 
bring me where I am needed." Strive 
after absolute abandonment to Him, 
after an entire indifference to particular 
persons, places, and objects, except in so 
far as they present themselves as un- 
doubted instruments of the Divine 
Master to whose service we have 
pledged ourselves without any reserve. 
Control the truant fancy, and strive by 
steady steps to attain self-government, 
the home rule of the heart, which 
enables the true religious to surrender 
a perfect will to God. 

The steadiness of aim which controls 

the vagaries of a flighty vanity is main- 

[146] 



UNFAITHFULNESS. 



tained by fidelity to a recognized duty 
or purpose. The fault opposed to this 
is for the most part unfaithfulness in 
little things. We must not forget that 
charity suffers from this kind of un- 
faithfulness very considerably; for the 
lax and slatternly manner of dealing 
with persons and things consecrated to 
God's special service, which character- 
izes this same unfaithfulness, is apt to 
scandalize and irritate others, and thus 
destroys the spirit of order, which 
spirit is absolutely necessary to peaceful 
community life. It scatters attention 
and weakens in general control of self. 
I have just mentioned this distemper, 
in passing, as a common characteristic 
of fanciful and flighty people ; and 
every religious knows that flights of 

this kind are sure to bring on confusion, 

[147] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

which is not the element by which an 
order is maintained, 

Sol. 

But there is another way in which 
charity suffers at times, and that from 
what would seem to be a virtue, at 
least in a religious. I mean a certain 
solemn manner which, without being 
pompous, carries with it an air of stiff 
singularity, a sort of preciseness about 
little things which seems to apply the 
rule, like a tape measure, to everything 
and to everybody whom it meets. This 
is a fault which calls more for regret 
than censure, and as a rule those who 
possess it are punished by being habit- 
ually misunderstood in the circle of 
friends or associates toward whom they 

really bear the kindliest sentiments. 

[148] 



NOT TOO SOLEMN. 



These religious are exemplary in ob- 
serving the rule. They couldn't do 
otherwise ; it comes to them by nature. 
They are always grave and demure 
and look for correctness, as if they 
were funeral directors, which they 
don't mean to be at all. The fact is 
they have an upright moral backbone, 
which is their perpetual cross, and which 
makes them strait-laced and solemn, 
like official scarecrows in the religious 
field intended to guard the place against 
the approach of joyousness. Whilst 
they don't actually prophesy dismal 
things, they throw a damper on harm- 
less recreation, and thus seem to put 
up a severe standard for others. 

If we should suffer even slightly 
from this peculiarity, let us by all 

means exert ourselves in the way of 

[149] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

improving our looks and put some joy- 
ous flexibility in place of the stiffness 
which has come to us by inheritance. 

The gravity that has no smiles is 
good enough for the anchorites, people 
who live in deserts, or in cellars, like 
mushrooms, that need no light. In the 
convent we need sunshine and geniality. 
Good humor is a quality that can be 
cultivated, and, as it is a great power 
for good, we ought to cultivate it 
incessantly. Why should not this re- 
ligious, to whom order and obedience 
come, as it were, naturally, be pleasant 
at all times? I have called this note 
Sol^ because the SohvamtY which I have 
criticized is the thing to be counter- 
acted; for, though it is not sinful, it 
nevertheless befits only solitaries of the 

desert, who save their souls by pure 

[150] 



LAMENTATIONS. 

love of God, having no neighbors to 
try their virtue or their affections. We, 
however, are expected to save our souls 
in company, that is, through charity 
toward others — the poor, the infirm, 
the ignorant. Among these may be 
counted the members of our household, 
who profess the vow of poverty, and 
who are supposed to have realized the 
condition of their dependence and who 
are engaged in the study of self-knowl- 
edge, and self-abasement, which is the 
science of the saints. 

La. 

But the austerity that chills is much 
less opposed to the genial atmosphere 
of charity which should reign in a relig- 
ious house than a certain languishing, 

sighing, and doleful manner of sensitive 

[151] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

persons, with whom every correction, 
however delicately administered, opens 
the flood-gates of the tear-reservoir. La 
is their note. They belong to the 
Z^mentation choir which, instead of 
appearing for three days in Holy Week, 
is kept going all the year round. What 
such natures need is a little experience 
of the rough handling, the sharp act- 
ualities of the world. Hence it is a 
wise precaution to let the tender sprout 
of a graduate, who thinks she has a 
vocation to Religion, go out into secular 
life for a while, before admitting her as 
a postulant to the cloister. " Society 
life " is indeed a danger, against absorp- 
tion into which the innocent must be 
guarded ; but it has also its advantages 
for the young nestling who never got 

rid of her superfluous tear-supply. A 

[152] 



RAIN SHOWERS. 



little application of the sharp burnings 
of worldly wit and censure is likely to 
evaporate the precious liquid treasured 
under the eyes, and to leave behind 
only the salt of worldly wisdom which, 
if it finds anything to cry about, does 
it in secret, and rarely enough when it 
discovers that nothing good comes of it. 
For us who are bent on self-reform, the 
habit of weeping over wounds inflicted 
upon self-love is entirely contrary to 
that holy courage which is characterized 
by serenity, by an habitual peace and 
joy, marks of a well-balanced mind and 
will. In short, these rain showers of 
self-love are opposed to charity. 

Si (<S'^) 

The next step toward Christ's charity 

is (for the religious) the sisterly spirit — 

[153] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

that is to say, the community spirit. 
Opposed to it is, first of all, singularity^ 
which separates us either in act or 
thought from the common circle, whose 
individual members were given us by 
God as companions, to revere, to help, 
to cherish, and of which circle He 
Himself proposes to be the constant 
centre. We hear a good deal about 
singularity as hurtful to the spirit of 
community life; and we know exactly 
what the Rule means when it prohib- 
its this violation of conventual charity. 
There is, however, one phase of it to 
which I would call attention here, be- 
cause it has a way of disguising itself or 
getting out of reach, and thus doing a 
good deal of mischief in a quiet way. 
The singularity of which I speak is 

not the habitual article which is consti- 

[154] 



LOWERING STORMS. 

tutional with vain or sentimental people, 
but rather one that comes spasmodically 
and which times itself in its ngly moods. 
It appears after storms, usually after 
some correction in the chapter-room or 
upon the refusal on the part of the 
superior to endorse some pet scheme. 
In short, it is usually provoked by 
some of those little humiliations which 
our own pride brings upon us without 
anybody else contributing thereto. Such 
storms, instead of clearing the atmos- 
phere and making the sun come out, 
are attended, for a considerable time 
after the thunder and lightning have 
gone, by dark skies, with a moody, 
brooding silence. It usually exhibits in 
the recreation-room, where it shows by 
way of contrast to the habitual light 

of joy supposed to pervade conventual 

[155] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

relaxation. And therein lies the sin- 
gularity of this silent, sullen mood. 
Women have, if my readers will not be 
angry with me for saying it, this fatal 
gift (besides the " dono fatale della bel- 
lezza " of which the poet speaks), that 
they can inflict pain without seeming to 
say or do anything painful ; just as, on 
the other hand, they possess the power 
of being magnificently kind without the 
pretence or show of charity. Their 
cleverness finds a way of becoming an 
instrument of torture, inflicting wounds 
hardly perceived, yet fatal to the health 
or life of another's heart against whom 
it is directed. A seemingly casual look 
or gesture, often without any words, 
acts like a sting, speedily and delicately 
instilling the poison which pains and 

destroys happiness ; yet it permits 

[156] 



BITTER SILENCE. 

no one to locate or charge the wanton 
act against Its originator. 

This kind of silence loudly proclaims 
itself, as I have said, in the midst of a 
happy band by its morose singularity. 
It seems to say with every breath it 
draws out : " See, Sisters, don't you 
realize that I have been crushed ; that 
my spirits are broken ? " In this way 
sympathy is courted from the crowd 
around without a word; and if per- 
chance there be another discordant note 
in that room, there arises at once a 
mutual understanding, and the joy and 
the harmony of the community are 
disturbed. 

There are many, many varieties of 

this singular spirit, this silence that 

speaks volumes of wounded pride, and 

which violates charity by casting suspi- 

[157] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

cion on the methods, the motives and 
conduct of superiors who are powerless 
to defend themselves. Sometimes it is 
merely an imagined wrong that is being 
resented in this ungenerous way ; a 
reported word is taken up and thought 
over until it has supplied enough food 
for a grievance, when false zeal sets it 
afire by an air of violated rights. But 
enough of this unwholesome subject. 

Another, though much less hurtful 
form of silent singularity, is preoccupa- 
tion with certain individual duties which 
hinders us from giving ourselves to the 
community in a spirit of sociableness. 
It has the advantage of being under- 
stood, and does not, like the morose 
silence of injured self-love, spread an 
atmosphere of poison of which you can- 
not reach the exact source, and which 

[158] 



TOO MUCH ENGROSSED. 

therefore does not allow the party 
against whom it is directed any fair 
defence. But whilst it may seem excu- 
sable, it is not always harmless, and may 
injure the spirit of religious charity. 

We might indeed be so self-occupied 
as to deem ourselves justified in neglect- 
ing the duties of sisterly attention, even 
whilst we are present at common recrea- 
tion. Yet, although everybody under- 
stands that there are times and places 
rendering such isolation legitimate, it is 
nearly always at the risk of lessening 
charity that we permit our duties to 
engross us when we are actually in the 
circle of others, where everybody is 
naturally expected to contribute to the 
common conversation. True charity 
is considerate, sympathetic, thinks of 

others first, is disinterested, noble, and 

[159] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

chivalrous. Shall we not cultivate this 
spirit? Assuredly. Thus we compass 
the full range of that royal virtue of 
charity which leads to Christ. It 
makes of our efforts an ascending 
scale, the end of which is in Paradise. 
The last note, like the first of this 
scale, is and remains — Do ! 



[It)0 



MONOTONOUS EXERCISE. 

ETUDES. 

We have seen that the perfection of 
the Religious Life is reached by gradual 
advance through the exercise of certain 
virtues which may be compared to the 
notes of a musical scale in which the 
last sound represents the highest degree 
of practical charity. As a musical ex- 
ercise the scale is merely finger practice. 
There is no air, no particular melody in 
it. It only renders us apt for the per- 
formance of those more pleasing and 
elaborate pieces which delight the ear 
and raise the heart. Such pieces are 
still to be learned. 

Looking at a Religious Order living 
in community from this point of our 
analogy, the practice of the scale may 
be compared to the practice of vocal or 

[i6i] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

mental prayer, or of mortification, or of 
obedience, or of any other virtue which 
leads to the habit of perfect charity. It 
is a dry and monotonous exercise, until 
we have learned to apply it by a sort 
of instinct to the ordinary actions of 
life so as to give edification and enjoy- 
ment to others. Then our hearts are 
no longer constrained to irksome labor; 
but they make melody within and har- 
mony without, and they answer perfectly 
to the intentions of our Divine Master, 
who presides at the organ and renders 
us active instruments of His holy will. 
We must, therefore, learn to play 
something — something that has a motif 
in it, and that makes people listen to 
the air, and causes them to repeat it to 
themselves, or that draws them to chime 

in with theii voices, accompanying the 

[162] 



CHIMING IN, 

melody. Indeed, this is one of the 
principal objects our Great Organist has 
in view. He wants to bring everybody 
to listen to and join in the sacred music. 
If the little ones of Christ, or the poor 
in the world, or those who by reason of 
sin have lost the sense of joy, can be 
made to attend to the beautiful music of 
our lives, they will easily learn the 
words of truth which are set to the 
melody of religious activity ; they will 
forget their sorrows and accept the les- 
son of resignation ; they will begin to 
long for nobler joys, such as the angelic 
hymns sweetly announce to all those 
who seek admittance to Paradise : Glory 
to God in heaven, and peace to men of 
good will. * 

In the matter of music, it must be 

confessed that for some of us it is far 
[163] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

more difficult to learn than it is for 
Others. There are certain natures gifted 
with talents, such as a good ear, or a 
light touch and a retentive memory, for 
musical pieces. They find it quite easy 
to play what they once hear or are 
taught. They need hardly any notes 
and no study, or very little, because 
they play by ear. To such players may 
be compared the religious who practise 
the virtue of charity in certain directions 
as if it came to them by nature. They 
love children; therefore children love 
them and can be managed by them. 
Such a natural disposition is nothing 
less than a vocation to a life of service 
for poor children, orphans, or found- 
lings. Others possess an inborn sym- 
pathy for the suffering, together with a 

certain tact and prudence. This fits 

[164] 



CATCHING THE MELODY. 

them for the service of the sick, and 

they feel an attraction to enter an Order 

in which they can spend their lives amid 

the miseries of a hospital. Others, again, 

have a natural reverence for the aged, 

which makes them anxious to serve 

them, ready to excuse their peculiarities, 

and willing to take upon themselves 

humiliations for the alleviation of the 

aged poor. This means a call to such 

service as God requires from religious 

like the Little Sisters of the Poor. But 

all these whom I have mentioned may 

be said to catch the divine melody by 

ear, and they can hardly do otherwise 

than follow the attraction of their 

vocation, so that, even if they were 

obliged to live in the world, they 

would seek the occupation of nurses 

or take a hand in organizing charitable 

[165] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

projects for the relief of the poor and 
the infirm. 

Now, to those whose natural ability 
and attraction lead them toward works 
of mercy and charity — and that is the 
favorite tune of our Divine Master — 
it is needless to say anything by way of 
particular instruction beyond what has 
already been said. They might profit 
by certain exercises, but they do not 
have to go through the whole Practice 
Book of Christian Perfection. 

Apart from the religious who are 
gifted with an inborn love for works 
of mercy, and who are therefore like 
players endowed with a natural musical 
gift, there are others who have a capac- 
ity for developing artistic talent, and 
whom our Lord employs or rather 
selects for certain difficult performances 

[166] 



TECHNIQUE. 

which require special skill. The tastes 
and abilities of such religious are to be 
directed and educated in particular lines. 
It is to this class that I am addressing 
myself presently. 

A Vocation. 

Charity does not require a special 

vocation; the foundations of it are 

laid in the heart, and the will builds 

upon these foundations, whilst the mind 

merely superintends its proper exercise. 

But the art and science of Education 

demands certain special studies and 

special instruction; and those who are 

called to a religious life, the duties 

of which imply absolute devotion to 

the work of education, must apply 

themselves in a particular way to the 

" Etudes." 

[167] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

If you ask me what are " Etudes/* 
I refer you to a dictionary. " Etude == 
a study, a lesson in music ; a composi- 
tion having artistic value and intended 
mainly to exercise the pupil in overcom- 
ing some particular technical difficulty'' 
There you have it all. To produce a 
brilliant concert- effect we must apply 
ourselves to the Etudes. Let us devote 
some attention to this theme. Our 
object is to find some helps in performing 
the religious task of teaching. Accord- 
ingly we shall give our attention first 
of all to certain difficulties in the per- 
formance of our school-work. These 
difficulties may be likened to certain 
musical passages, fugues, and contra- 
puntal arrangements, which have not 
the air of easy melody, and must be 
overcome by careful analysis. They 

[168] 



ARTISTIC PARTS. 

have to be studied in order that the 
sacred concert may be a perfect success ; 
for in Heaven nothing will be accepted 
but what is perfect. 

If we have become familiar with 
these artistic parts and have mastered 
the Etudes with care and thoughtful- 
ness, we shall have no difficulty in any 
other theme, whether it be the sonatas 
and grand marches^ which by reason of 
their form and name suggest public 
performances that make considerable 
sound, or certain " Commencement " 
Exercises, of which I should like to say 
something, if I were not afraid of ex- 
asperating some good people. The 
practice of the Etudes will also render 
easy for us the meditations, fantasies, 
and serenades that elevate the heart in 

peaceful hours of rest, and which serve 

[169] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

as a preparation for the great symphony 
in which all who are on the side of God 
will take part some final day. 

Motives and Principles of the 
" Etudes/* 

God is life. Life, as science has 
demonstrated, is progressive motion. 
Hence, we might say that life in union 
with God is true progress. Progressive 
motion is indeed essential to religion. 
From this principle we derive the con- 
clusion that a religious must strive to 
make continual progress in the way 
which leads to Christ-like charity. 

But just as the practice of progressive 
finger exercises in music is not suffi- 
cient to produce results of melodic or 

harmonious composition, so the pro- 

[170] 



PROPER SANCTIFICATION. 

gressive motion of the Religious Life, 
without a particular motive or design 
producing harmony, or accompanying 
some Divine purpose which, like a 
melody, leads the theme. Is insufficient 
for the practical work of Christ-like 
charity. This Is especially true of the 
work of education. A religious who 
practises all the virtues of our scale in 
a perfect degree Is still accomplishing 
only or mainly his or her own personal 
sanctification. Progress In holiness 
sanctifies the individual. It Is the 
gradual and spontaneous rising of the 
soul, which, casting off, one after an- 
other, the Impediments of earth, grows 
lighter and becomes spiritualized. 
Thus, under the influence of the Divine 
attraction, it is lifted toward its center, 

God. Such is the progress of personal 

[171] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

sanctification which suffices for the con- 
templative. 

The religious of our teaching orders, 
however, profess more than their own 
sanctification. They are not contem- 
platives merely, receiving and feeding 
upon the full light of divine grace, like 
the 'fixed star ; but they are like the 
planets, which, whilst shedding the light 
received, determine at the same time 
the motion and lightsome progress of 
others around them. They not only 
move along the straight, well-determined, 
and narrow path that leads to salvation, 
but they make that path clear and ac- 
cessible to others, thus following the 
Divine Sun, Christ, who said, not 
simply "I am the truth and the life," 
but likewise " I am the way." 

Now, the idea of progress Implies 
[172] 



VESSELS OF WISDOM. 

that of perfectibility, of betterment, of 
change, not only in ourselves, but also 
in those whose motion and life we 
influence and determine by education. 
Heat, which is identical with motion, 
affects the metal in the crucible, reduc- 
ing it to liquid, and thus rendering it 
capable of adaptation to the forms which 
surround it. This change does not 
lessen the quality or value of the metal, 
but it enhances it. Thus, whilst reli- 
gious persons aiming at their own sanc- 
tification may remain isolated, unaffected 
by the changes around them, the mem- 
bers of the active, and, most of all, the 
teaching orders, aiming at becoming 
instruments of knowledge, vessels deal- 
ing out wisdom unto others, can not 
remain impervious to the influences 

around them. By allowing themselves, 

[173] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

within proper bounds, to adopt the 
form and fashion of things around 
them, they enhance their own value. 

Progress, not Change. 

The founders of our religious teach- 
ing institutes understood this ; yet they 
could not always foresee the character 
of the influences which would affect 
society in the future, and they could 
not, therefore, have legislated for 
meeting the educational requisites of 
the present day in detail. They knew 
that others would continue their work 
with the same intelligent zeal which had 
inspired their own activity ; and so they 
did what every enterprising founder of 
an industrial establishment intended to 
serve posterity, does : they marked out 

the nature of the work, the material to 

[174] 



CHANGES. 

be fashioned into forms that answered 
the habits of their generation, the prin- 
ciples which were to guide the conduct 
of their assistants. But they did not 
wish the interests of their work to suffer 
from an absolute adherence to the forms 
and fashions that were in use in their 
own day, and time, and place ; they did 
not intend to prevent such changes as 
would seem necessary to serve the needs 
of a people whose habits of thought and 
feeling and whose methods of living 
might differ from their own, provided 
these changes were not out of harmony 
with the spirit of their foundation. 
Hence, the plans which the founders of 
our religious teaching Orders devised 
for the instruction of their own gene- 
ration in its time and place, although 

not to be lightly set aside, are yet no 

[175] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

essential part of that religious life which 
the members of the teaching Orders 
have assumed, under the Divine gui- 
dance, as their means of special sanctifi- 
cation. 

In recognizing this fact we merely 
recognize the action of God in His own 
creation. Take the vine-fruit which 
the Heavenly Gardener has planted and 
ripened on the golden hillsides of sunny 
Burgundy. The amber creaming liquid 
distilled from its grape has a rare fra- 
grance and a wondrously health-giving 
strength. French emigrants, eager to 
increase the yield of this gift of nature, 
have taken perfect specimens of the vine 
to California, where the mountains slope 
and the white soil shines like the chalky 
elevations of their own Mont Rachet ; 

and they dealt with their transplanted 

[176] 



ADAPTATION. 

Sprigs as they would deal with the young 
growth raised on their own native soil, 
— sheltering, nourishing, pruning with 
care ; yet the first result was a wine as 
dry and bitter as vinegar. Then they 
varied the treatment, added grape-sugar 
during the fermentation, or by the ap- 
plication of heat interrupted the process 
which turns the natural sugar of the 
grape into alcohol, and there came forth 
a mellow wine promising to rival that 
of the mother soil. These viticulturists 
did not change the plant, but they 
adapted their treatment of it to the new 
climate and the new conditions of the 
soil,^thus reaching the same results as 
their trade taught them to look for at 
home. 

We realize, then, that such changes 

in the art of educating are a necessity 

[177] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

where the conditions of growth, whether 
social, intellectual, moral, or physical, 
vary ; for in these cases there is no 
deviation from the original purpose, 
which was not so much to maintain an 
unalterable routine as rather to produce 
a definite result : " By their fruits you 
shall know them." 

Caution. 

But whilst a religious educator is not 
always right in appealing to the tradi- 
tions of the past as an excuse for losing 
hold of the opportunities offered in the 
future, the cry for advance may beguile 
him to adopt a course which is more 
disastrous than a total falling back. In 
showing the necessity of progressive 
changes in the educational field, I have 

used the figure of the vine which is 

[178] 



SCHOLASTIC NOVELTIES. 

transplanted for the health-giving and 
exhilarating qualities of its fruit. Yet 
that same fruit of the vine has wrecked 
more healthy lives and destroyed more 
happiness than pestilence or war; for 
man, in his endeavor to increase the 
vivifying effects of this beneficent 
liquid, has induced the convalescent, 
eager for the joy and strength of life, 
to drink to excess. The amber liquid, 
with its tiny pearls rising in the glass, 
tasted so innocently sweet that he did 
not perceive how the subtle fumes 
ascended to his brain and stole away 
his judgment. It behooves us, there- 
fore, to be measured in accepting every 
novelty of study or method in peda- 
gogics, or to make it our own at the 
risk of lessening, by the increase of 

apparent knowledge, the development 

[179] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

of that sourd judgment which lies at 
the root of true wisdom and of the 
science of the saints, upon which social 
as well as personal happiness is unalter- 
ably founded. 

First Etude. 

Altogether our religious teachers, 
true to the established spirit and con- 
stitution of the approved institute to 
which they belong, possess every means 
of securing real progress and success if 
they utilize the sciences and scholastic 
methods of secular life for the attain- 
ment of the end for which God estab- 
lished society. To attain this object 
the educators have to turn their atten- 
tion to constant improvements in three 
directions : 

I. As regards the general organi- 

[i8o] 



THOROUGHNESS. 

zation of a course of instruction, out- 
lining the main programme of studies, 
fixing with precision the object, scope, 
and character of each class, and the 
time justly to be allotted to each 
branch. And here it is to be noted 
that a judicious disposition of such 
branches as may be for the time de- 
manded by popular appreciation, but 
which are really of little practical use in 
the after life of the child, will show the 
true wisdom of the educator. What- 
ever we teach, we can not afford to dis- 
pense with thoroughness in education. 
Now, the secular educational establish- 
ment lays, as a rule, less stress upon 
solidity than upon brilliancy. The 
eminent Dominican, P, Weiss, char- 
acterizes the modern tendency in edu- 
cation in the following terms : Take a 

[i8i] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 

large caldron, such as brewers use, — 
throw into it zoology, astronomy, 
and geography; botany, physics, and 
mineralogy; ethnography, geometry, 
high calculus, and chemistry ; diplom- 
acy, history, and mythology. For 
each of these specialties one text-book 
will do, — something in the style of 
"easy methods.'* Then make the 
entire mixture boil vigorously (until it 
makes sufficient noise). When all the 
elements are reduced to a uniform 
paste, of about the consistency of the 
primitive protoplasm, you must add 
by way of sweetening some generalities 
about humanity and advance, then some 
pet forms of politeness, and just a trifle 
of religion — it is fashionable, provided 
it be sufficiently diluted by liberal 

views, so that people who are of im- 

[182] 



SPECIAL STUDIES. 



portance in this world may be saved 

for the next. AU you have to do with 

this mixture is to dish it out ; the instant 

the child puts it to its lips it will become 

a veritable Solomon. 

Now, this is the prevailing condition 

of things in the educational world to-day. 

Our curriculum is crowded with special 

studies, which for the most part aim at 

pretense of knowledge rather than the 

information which strengthens solid 

convictions and thus becomes of value 

in life. Under such circumstances the 

heads of our educational establishments 

find themselves in a dilemma. We do 

not aim at brilliancy but at solidity in 

the education we would impart; yet, 

if we omit from our curriculum the 

studies which are properly taught in 

the accredited schools of the land, we 

[183] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

shall be set down as lacking in progress, 
and in failing, therefore, to educate 
children for the sphere in which they 
are actually to move. 

If, on the other hand, we accept all 
the novelties in pedagogy which are 
forced upon our attention, we shall fail 
in disciplining the mind, because of the 
bewildering multiplicity of topics to 
which the child has to give its attention. 
What, then, are we to do about it ? 

We introduce the new sciences; we 
must have them on our programme, 
but we give them the subordinate 
attention which they deserve when 
weighed in the balance of practical 
utility. This fact need not imply that 
our teaching is to be superficial ; and 
we may truthfully answer in the affirm- 
ative the query of parents who wish to 

[184J 



RIGHT METHOD. 

know whether we give due attention in 
our course to the "latest *ologies." 
Happily we have no government in- 
spectors who measure our efficiency by 
their pagan standards. 

Second Etude. 

The second field in which progress 

must be noted is that of educational 

methods. The test of a method is the 

power it demonstrates for arriving at 

adequate results. Our method must 

be useful, that is, it must be capable of 

imparting to the child that knowledge 

which, under present conditions, is 

necessary for attaining its last end in its 

sojourn through life; it must impart, 

therefore, the possession of certain social 

qualifications and an acquaintance with 

topics which will enable the child to 

[185] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

take its place in the order established 
by God for mutual help and converse. 
In order that this twofold object may 
be accomplished, our method must be 
attractive. Thus, what is necessary for 
the last end, and for the social life, 
which is the way to that end, may be 
readily taken and absorbed by the 
faculties of the child without repelling, 
wearying, or surfeiting its mind. Now, 
those of us who have lived through 
several educational processes and ob- 
served the changes will realize that 
methods which were attractive enough 
twenty years ago, and imparted good 
knowledge, have somehow lost their 
interest for the child of to-day. A 
wooden horse could amuse a lad of 
seven for days and weeks, and a paste- 
board doll, if it fell, would draw affec- 

[186] 



Variety. 

tionate sighs and tears from the little 
maid of six. To-day the boy wants a 
real steam engine, and the girl needs a 
tea-party and cups of real china to 
make her feel that she is not being 
imposed upon. Such is the temper of 
our children, and we have to reckon 
with that in our methods. The great 
variety of studies demanded in the 
modern curriculum is of some help to 
the teacher in this respect. Variety 
delights the child, and there is not 
much danger in admitting a moderate 
list of popular branches of study into 
our curriculum. But it would be a 
vital error to treat them in a manner 
which would eat into the time devoted 
to the essential branches of the old 
system. Take, for example, the sub- 
ject of mental philosophy, or of meta- 

[187] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

physics, or of political economy, or 
similar disciplines which are being 
taught at many of our institutions. 
In other directions we have physiology, 
philosophy of history, ethnology, ar- 
chaeology. For some of these we need 
Catholic text-books ; for others we are 
referred to the least objectionable 
works written by Protestants or infidels. 
All these branches, whilst they are 
popular, are new to teachers of a few 
years ago, who feel that the men and 
women up to their time were quite as 
respectable and cultured and perhaps 
better than the new man and woman. 
The books that treat of these sciences 
cover from 200 to 400 pages. 1 o 
master them the pupil and teacher 
spend numerous hours a week. It will 

be admitted that to get through one of 

[188] 



SUMMARIZE. 

the text-books with any hope of giving 
a systematic survey of any science, 
which has no art corresponding to it in 
the practical life of a woman, is a 
lengthy task consuming much time. 
Instead of this the Catholic teacher 
might devise a better plan, saving the 
pupil much labor, and reserving time 
and energy for studies more essential in 
forming character. This method con- 
sists in summarizing the leading prin- 
ciples of any given text-book; of 
selecting those chapters which strike the 
teacher as of practical worth. These 
may be presented or dictated to the 
pupils in brief compositions. The 
index or contents page of a modern 
text-book nearly always enables us to 
follow the connection of thought in the 

development of a given science. This 

[189J 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

involves, certainly, more than ordinary 
labor, at intervals, for the teacher, since 
she practically makes her own text- 
books for her classes. I assume, of 
course, that she herself has mastered 
the study through some reputable text- 
book. This process of condensing is 
not so difficult, provided the teacher 
have the gift of connecting and subor- 
dinating the parts according to their 
practical importance, and of referring 
the pupil, if necessary, to more exhaust- 
ive works for later study. We must 
not forget that the real object of educa- 
tion, quite apart from any religious con- 
sideration, can never be to give pupils 
an actual or complete knowledge of the 
things which they need to use in their 
respective spheres of life ; it can only 

give them an indication of the nature 

[190] 



ELICIT INQUIRY. 

of such knowledge, of the sources 
whence it may be derived, and of the 
use which can be made of it. All else 
is cramming the mind, is readily for- 
gotten, and really of no value. Hence 
we have done enough in ethics, for 
example, if we explain (requiring the 
pupil to write and answer questions) 
what is the meaning and province, what 
are the leading propositions, what are 
the principles by which we meet objec- 
tions to the Catholic view of ethics. In 
other words, we teach results rather 
than processes. All this may be done 
within the compass of a good article in 
any encyclopaedia, and enlarged as our 
time-table and opportunities allow. 
There are other methods, brief and in- 
teresting alike, especially for advanced 

classes. They rest on the principle of 

[191] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

eliciting inquiry and interest by the 
suggestion of originality. But with all 
this, schedules and educational maga- 
zines and the experience of ingenious 
teachers do make us easily familiar. 

Third Etude. 

Our method must attract and interest 

the child; and this is done far more 

effectively by winning the affections of 

its heart than by any device of an 

inventive imagination. The reason is 

this: whatever appeal you make to the 

capacity of the child in order to interest 

it, there is no means which will attract 

all the pupils in an equal degree. 

Their apprehension, intelligence, taste, 

and nervous sustaining power differ 

greatly at all times and under any 

[192] 



WIN THE CHILD. 

Circumstances. Hence, whilst we may 
hold the attention of some, we lose 
that of others, who do not simply 
remain passive, as though they had 
dropped out of the line, but they 
promptly become disturbing elements 
which claim the corrective attention of 
the teacher. Furthermore, this in- 
equality of conduct arouses a sense of 
comparison in the more capable pupils 
who feel themselves superior. Now, 
whilst competition is a kind of neces- 
sity by which we elicit activity, which 
does not injure the simple-minded 
child, it generates and nourishes a pride 
which, bad as it is in man, is infinitely 
more repulsive in woman, on whom it 
takes a much greater hold in various 
forms of envy or jealousy. 

The better and far safer way is to 
[193' 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 

gain the Individual affection of the 
child. For where there is a real affec- 
tion (and a religious teacher can, as a 
rule, attain this with surety, on condi- 
tions of which I shall speak later on), 
there is always att'^.ntion, always willing- 
ness to obey, eagerness to understand, 
and anxiety to please. No doubt, we 
often find it difficult to accomplish this, 
either because there is in the child a 
lack of feeling, or a quality of selfish- 
ness which renders its heart unrespon- 
sive to suggestions of kindness or 
interest, or else because we ourselves 
feel a natural repugnance or (what is 
worse) an indifference toward children 
of such disposition. If the defect is 
in the child, be sure it can be con- 
quered ; if it be in ourselves, if it be 

indifference, then it looks very much 

[194J 



ITS LOVABLE WORTH. 



as if we were failures in religion. 

Living as we do, it is absolutely true 

that, before we can be true teachers, we 

must be true religious. Now, every 

religious will realize that there is no 

child that has not one very lovable 

quality about it, though it may have 

no attraction for us. That one quality 

is the touch of its soul by the Precious 

Blood. Whatever we may feel or 

think, whatever experience we may 

have gone through to make the heart 

sick with ingratitude of those whom 

we have striven to benefit or gain over, 

two facts remain — the value of the 

soul of that child, and the pledge we 

have given to prepare it for its heavenly 

setting by the process of education, 

which is the wearisome process of 

cleansing, and filing, and polishing. 

[195] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

There is in our work this consolation, 

that the harder the substance (that is 

to say, the intractable soul of the 

child), the greater is the price we obtain 

for it when we have polished it to its 

capable brilliancy. That brilliancy is, 

as a rule, the result of friction, which 

draws to the surface the native heat, 

and causes a consuming of the rugged 

fibers. We must keep at it, moving 

ever along the grain. 

If as educators we have drawn out 

this warmth from the child's heart, it 

works spontaneously in the direction 

of efforts. It will follow us; it will 

watch us, instead of having to be 

watched ; its heart having warmed 

toward us, it will rise above the 

common level, as does all heat ; it will 

become what the educator is and wishes 
[196] 



THE TRANSFORMATION. 

it to be. For it is an unalterable law 

of life, based on psychological and 

eternal truth, that a man becomes like 

to the things he loves. This is true a 

fortiori of the child. If, having taught 

it to love you, you show it that you 

love virtue, that you love knowledge, 

it will exert all its innate powers to 

possess these qualities also, because we 

covet what we love, and, most of all, 

that which is distant from our reach. 

It is part of our very being to long for 

the filling of the void in our fallen 

nature, and this fact is the very proof 

of our immortality. So true is this, 

that the child becomes transformed 

even as to its physical expression, and 

takes on the likeness of the teacher. 

Have you ever observed a singular 

famiJv-likeness in religious of the same 

[197] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

orderj who, having lived under the 

discipline and teaching of a common 

guide, and in the spirit of a common 

founder, somehow seem to reflect in 

their very physiognomy the peculiar 

character of their institute ? Such is 

our nature; and this is the meaning of 

the Thomistic teaching (de fide) that 

the soul of man is the forma suhstan- 

tialis of the body ; in other words, that 

the soul gives form to the whole human 

being. Let us, then, lay hold of the 

soul of the child, and we shall get the 

leading string which controls all its 

talents, all its capacities, its temper and 

disposition, nay, its physical perfection 

and eternal well-being. 

We have considered the directions 

in which progress is desirable for our 

teachers, pledged first and foremost to 

[198] 



THE PERFECT TEACHER. 

the service of Christ, to whom also we 
are bound to lead others. These direc- 
tions regard the curriculum of studies 
to be pursued and the methods to be 
adopted, among which is always the 
first and most effectual — and in the 
long run the easiest — that which aims 
at gaining the affection of the child, 
making it docile and receptive for 
every kind of knowledge, natural and 
supernatural, which the teacher is 
capable of imparting. And this leads 
to a third and culminating point in the 
progressive movement of pedagogy, 
namely, the formation of the perfect 
teacher. For, after all, everything de- 
pends on the direct influence of the 
one who is to fashion the soul of the 
child into a perfect likeness of its 

Creator, whose immediate representa- 

[199] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

tive is the teacher. Sicut rex ita 
grex. 

Such are the Etudes, the special 
studies to which the religious who is 
called to teach must give his or her 
earnest attention. 



Principles in Practice. 

A knowledge of the theory, of the 
principles of musical composition^ is 
not sufficient to produce actual har- 
mony of sounds. On the other hand, 
our practice will be desultory unless we 
keep before us those fixed principles 
which underlie our art of making 
heavenly harmony in the souls of those 
whom we are to teach. Before speak- 
ing of the formation of the perfect 

teacher, under the head of " Cultivation 

[200] 



PRINCIPLES. 

of Style," let me resume a few prin- 
ciples from what has been said: 

1. In the matter of admitting new 
branches into the curriculum of studies, 
our teachers act wisely in accepting 
such as are commonly approved; but 
always with the distinction that what is 
not a direct aid to leading a religious 
life is to be subordinated to what we, 
who educate the heart before the mind, 
hold as essential; that the studies 
which give solidity are always to go 
before those that give brilliancy. 

2. The most efficient method is the 
method which most interests the child 
in any study that imparts convictions. 
Opinions are not convictions, even if 
they are truths. 

3. Though science is necessary for 

the teacher, it does not make the edu- 

[201] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

cator. The secret of educating well 
lies in a knowledge of the human heart, 
in patience^ and in the power of ex- 
ample. 

4. All education which does not 
teach the child to perfect itself by a 
habit of self-control and personal disci- 
pline is a failure. 

5. Cleverness, taste for study, habit 
of industry, may be inherited by a 
child. The one thing that is not 
transmitted by inheritance is Christian 
virtue ; it requires an educator. 

6. The child becomes like to the 
teacher whom it most loves. 

Cultivation of Style. 

Professed religious who are called to 

teach have their appointment "by 

divine grace." It is their privilege, 

[202] 



TRAINING THE TEACHER. 

and, if rightly taken hold of, it will be 
their constant joy to cooperate with 
God in His great work of accomplish- 
ing, of perfecting the designs of 
creation. The renewal of the world, 
its conservation in a healthy spirit, 
means nothing else than a continuous 
creation through the action of the Di- 
vine Spirit. " Emitte Spiritum Tuum 
et creabuntur, et renovabis faciem 
terrae." This is eminently true of 
education, which is the training unto 
perfection of the highest type of 
creation — man. 

To cooperate rightly, therefore, with 
God in this work of teaching requires 
special qualifications. These are, in- 
deed, guaranteed to the members of 
the teaching orders — thanks to God's 

wondrous goodness — in the fact that 

[203] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

He has called them to this task. Re- 
ligious teachers may not always be con- 
scious of the possession or operation of 
such qualities, because these were given 
them in the manner of a germ or seed, 
to be developed and cultivated in the 
soil of a good and faithful heart ; and, 
as it is often difficult .to tell what sort 
of fruit a small seed may bring forth, 
so a teacher may have no clear con- 
ception of what he or she can do, or 
rather what God may do in using them 
as instruments of education. Nor is it 
necessary. Does the lily grow less fair 
because it is unconscious of its growth ? 
In truth, it is very much better for all 
of us that we should not trouble our- 
selves about our talents in the way of 
rating them. What we have to do is 

to use them, and their use begins by 

[204] 



BINDING AND PRUNING. 

keeping them, like fruitful seed, under 
ground for awhile (humility), and to 
gather in this condition a certain 
amount of heat (fervor), so that the 
seed may break (mortification) ; and 
then the little germ, whatever its ulti- 
mate productiveness, will of itself 
struggle through the hard crust of the 
earth to the light. And if after that it 
is kept under proper shelter, within the 
rays of the Divine Sun which warms it, 
and drinks in the waters of divine grace 
which bedew it, and yields to the care 
of the gardener appointed by God, to 
tie and to steady it, giving it a rule lest 
it grow crooked, and to prune it, some- 
times even unto tears, lest it spread 
itself unduly — then that sprout of 
talent will bring flowers, and in its 

season fruits, with which we may safely 

[205] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

feed the little ones whom God intrusts 
to us for education. 

Safely feed the little ones ! We 
may ; and yet, in our very good-heart- 
edness (which is sometimes a weakness), 
we may overfeed them, or feed them at 
the wrong time, or feed them with a 
fruit too ripe or raw, or feed them in a 
manner too hasty, or in morsels too 
big for the little throats. In short, our 
feeding, however good the fruit of 
our gifts of mind, instead of preserv- 
ing life, may produce illness, pain, 
mental dyspepsia, cholera, choking, 
death of mind and heart ; and we who 
might have prevented it will be answer- 
able for the results. 

It is on this point, in the long line 

of a teacher's qualifications, that I will 

ask my readers chiefly to dwell, after 

[206] 



EXTERNAL GIFTS. 

briefly stating, for the sake of logical 
coherence, what every one knows to be 
the principal requisites, natural, in- 
tellectual, and moral, of all those who 
are called to the very important office 
of educating the young. 

Expression. 

I. (i) Among what are termed 
natural or physical qualifications, health 
is obviously counted, inasmuch as it 
implies the possession of habits of life 
which exclude a warping of the judg- 
ment and temper of the teacher (mens 
Sana in corpore sano), or the arousing 
of certain repugnances and prejudices 
which offend the sensibilities of the 
pupil. However, we know that defects 

of the body can often be compensated 

[207] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

for by extraordinary gifts of soul. 
Among the most efficient educators 
have been those who were habitually 
under the stress of physical suffering. 
(2) Next to health come (in the 
same natural order) an instinct of pro- 
priety, (3) a sense of order, (4) sim- 
plicity of manner. The last two are 
an ordinary result of the spirit of holy 
poverty and an abiding consciousness 
of the presence of God. I say o^ holy 
poverty, because that is quite compat- 
ible with the neatness and cleanliness 
which betoken a regard for our sur- 
roundings. " We are to form the 
pupils to habits of simplicity, order, 
economy, and a taste for the useful,'* 
writes the Venerable Madame Barat, 
one of the most enlightened educators 

of our time, and of these things we 

[208] 



INTERNAL GIFTS. 



must give the example. Such are the 
external qualifications. 

There are likewise internal gifts of 
the natural order requisite for the 
successful work of education : 

{a) Ordinary insight or penetration 
into human nature, and the tact which 
accompanies that gift ; 

{]?) the ability to communicate our 
thoughts ; 

{c) sufficient inventive power (imag- 
ination) to present knowledge in an 
interesting form, and elicit attention ; 

(d) the natural power of enforcing 
discipline ; 

(e) a pleasant manner. 

Somehow sanctity supplies all these; 

but in proportion as sanctity is lacking, 

they must be supplied from the natural 

order. 

[209] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

II. In the intellectual order the 
teacher requires : 

(i) Knowledge of the branches or 
topics to be taught, and of methods, 
particularly in certain special branches. 
The present training colleges lay con- 
siderable stress on this, and teach, 
under the head of " theory and prac- 
tice of education : " psychology, logic, 
ethics, the art of teaching, the history 
of education, methods for special 
topics, school hygiene, school prob- 
lems, criticism, elocution.^ I men- 
tion these merely under the head of 
knowledge because of the popular 
demand, and because similar courses 
have been adopted by some of 
the teaching orders in England, no- 
tably in the Normal Training School 

1 Cambridge Course, 1899. 

[210] 



NEAR GOD. 

of the Sisters of the Holy Child 
Jesus. 

(2) The habit (natural or through 
training by mathematics, logic, etc.) of 
consecutive and logical thinking. This 
secures the method which develops by 
means of synthesis and analysis. 

III. A third category of qualifica- 
tions belongs to the moral order. For re- 
ligious teachers they may be summed up 
in the faithful observance of the spirit 
and letter of the Rule of their institute. 

This qualification is decidedly of the 
highest importance, since it supplies 
both knowledge and method, because — 

(i) nearness to God opens all the 
sources of wisdom and knowledge;^ 

(2) because nearness to God puts us 

1 St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, St. Philip Benitius, Suarez, 
and other intellectual giants have called the crucifix their book; 
and we know what that book taught them even of human 
learning. 

[211] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

in the right attitude toward the child ; 
it gives us supernatural love, which in- 
spires the best method for attracting 
and teaching it. 

Tempo. 

What is called tempo in music is an 
indication of the relative rapidity of 
movement or rhythm with which a 
piece or passage is to be played. Thus 
lento is slow, allegro fast, forte strong, 
piano soft. In the work of education, 
religious education such as we are con- 
sidering, nothing can be done success- 
fully unless we observe the proper tempo. 
The manner in which we strike a note 
is apt to bring out the character of the 
piece. The touch must always be bold, 
that is to say, definite ; yet always just^ 

that is, not too strong or too subdued. 

[212] 



COURAGE AND JUSTICE. 

I have already outlined the qualifi- 
cations which are demanded in the 
Christian educator, of whom the true 
religious, apart from the well-informed 
parent, is the best type. If I were to 
put the whole matter in a simpler 
mould, following an eminent modern 
educator, Pere Lecuyer, I would say 
that our efforts should lay stress on 
the perfecting of certain natural virtues, 
which will give to our work of educa- 
tion the proper movement or tempOy 
and render it infinitely superior to any 
training that the best efforts of peda- 
gogical science and art can attain in all 
the different orders of study, intellec- 
tual or social. The two virtues which 
represent, so to speak, the prevailing 
tempo of our work as educators are 

courage and justice. They are the 

[213] 



THE HARMONY OF TH E RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

two main hinges on which swings the 
gate of the religious educator's effi- 
ciency, the gate which opens the way 
for the pupil to that sphere of the 
child's future usefulness which the 
education in the schools over which 
religious preside was intended to 
secure. 

If we desire confirmation of this 
thought, we shall find it in the teaching 
of the Angel of the Schools, which 
presents a singular harmony with the 
educational maxims to be gleaned in 
general from the lives of the founders 
of the orders that have made the train- 
ing of the young their special object. 

Forte. 

Courage [fortitudo), one of the es- 
sential requisites in the character of the 

[214] 



FACING DIFFICULTIES. 

Christian educatorj is, according to the 
Angelic Doctor, a virtue which restrains 
man within the bounds of right reason, 
whilst urging him to overcome the 
obstacles opposed to reason or to its 
legitimate use/ 

There are two ways in which this 
virtue manifests itself: 

1. In sustaining with equanimity and 
good-will the hardships imposed upon 
us by our condition of life. 

2. In facing deliberately new con- 
ditions which involve hardships and 
dangers. 

The habit of perseverance is the 
result and perfection of courage."" 

1 Summa 2a aae, qu. 123, art. i. — Cf. Le Pretre Edu- 
cateur, Lecuyer, pp. 4 fF. 

^ Cf. I Cor. 13 : 7, where St. Paul shows the twofold 
manifestation of courage to be a characteristic of the funda- 
mental virtue of charity — " charitas omnia suffer. " — iravra 
areyeCy that is, bears in silence; and "omnia sustinet " — 
Trdvra v7rofj,ev£i, that is, sustains, supports. 

[215] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

It is the virtue of fortitude which 
strikes us so predominantly in the lives 
of those saintly and generous pioneers 
who came to the New World to teach 
the rudiments of Christian faith and 
civilization to the natives and to the 
neglected children of the early rude 
settlers. These noble religious never 
spoke of success, yet it is to their 
seemingly slow progress that we owe 
the most valuable results of subse- 
quent periods in our history of 
Christian education. The saintly Ma- 
dame Duchesne used to say : " Person- 
ally I have never succeeded, but God 
gives me grace to rejoice in the success 
of others.'* Yet it was to her that 
Madame Barat felt impelled to write 
(February i6, 1852): "Oh, if we had 

many souls as zealous and as detached 

[216] 



THE HIDDEN FORCE. 

as those who have invaded your part of 
the world, foundations would he easy. 
Pray, then, dear and good Mother, 
urgently and fervently that our Divine 
Master may consider the needs of the 
souls we ought to save. He will grant 
the prayers of my dear old daughter 
who has so well understood the value 
of souls, and who never stopped at any 
obstacle when Jesus called upon her to 
help them."^ 

But this virtue of courage or forti- 
tude, which we are to cultivate in our- 
selves as Christian educators, must like- 
wise be drawn forth and developed in 
the child. I say drawn forth and de- 
veloped, because its germ resides in the 
soul of the child. There is in every 
human being a physical and moral 

1 Life, Vol. II, p. 27a. 

[217] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

force which, though latent in early- 
years, is capable of being cultivated so 
as to produce this Christian courage 
which is the secret of self-denial, of 
charity, of zeal, even unto martyr- 
dom, for the salvation of souls. You 
will find this germ-virtue in the child's 
soul manifesting itself in three centers 
of action — intellect, heart, and will. 

In every child this moral force 
dominates in one or other of these 
faculties, and the secret of our gaining 
control of the child consists in finding 
the dominant faculty and developing 
and utilizing it. 

I have said in a previous chapter 
that the teacher must love the child 
and gain its affection in order to suc- 
ceed in training it properly. But the 
difficulty is often how to draw out its 

[218] 



LET HER ALONE. 

affection ; for we must not forget that 
love here spoken of is not a sentiment, 
not an attachment which is created by 
favors, caresses, or flattery. No ; there 
are, it is true, children whom we thus 
bring to follow us by simply appealing 
to their aflTectionate disposition; but 
there are others in whom intelligence 
predominates over aflTection ; and others 
in whomx the will (self-will) predomi- 
nates over both. 

A PlACERE. 

To the child that has heart, whose 

sympathies are strong and quickly rise 

to the surface, the educator need give 

comparatively little attention. You can 

let it move as it pleases (a piacere). 

Such a child will follow its teacher 

spontaneously, and it will do whatever 

[219] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

is prescribed or even suggested by a 
superior who can command respect by 
his or her personal conduct as a relig- 
ious. Indeed, it is generally to the 
advantage of such a child to be rarely 
noticed by the teacher, except in so far 
as the common discipline or exceptional 
sensitiveness, showing the need of oc- 
casional encouragement, may demand. 
What the child of heart needs most is 
the fostering of independence of char- 
acter; and with this end in view it 
must become accustomed to stand 
alone ; thus it is brought, gradually, to 
develop the element of courage latent 
in its soul. The young tree shaken by 
the rude winds and stripped of its 
leaves may look quite forlorn at times 
and provoke the pity of the gardener ; 

but the gardener, too, has an occasion 

[220] 



DEVELOPS STRENGTH. 



here for the exercise of courage, by 
withholding the expression of sym- 
pathy, mindful only of the fact that 
the tree much shaken by the winds lays 
a stronger hold on the soil, provided 
the winds are not without intermission, 
and do not come always from the same 
quarter. The natural craving for the 
aesthetic, the poetic, and sentimental, 
which manifests itself in particular 
friendships, in letter-writing, and even 
in certain devotions, is to be curbed in 
all children of exceptionally big-hearted 
disposition, as a danger which saps that 
portion of the material in the soul 
from which character is to be built for 
their future safeguard through life. 
Even when it happens that, in the en- 
deavor to repress this noxious tendency, 
we seem to wound the sensitiveness of 

[221] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

the child, so that it droops in apparent 
helplessness, let us remember the na- 
ture of the southern mimosa. The 
little sensitive plant shrinks and col- 
lapses at the touch of the hand as 
though withered and broken forever; 
yet give it a little time and sunshine, 
and it rises gradually, showing no 
traces of its former weakness. Hence 
it is that the wisest instructors, espe- 
cially in the case of girls, warn the 
teacher against an excessive cultivation 
of sentiment or attachment, at the ex- 
pense of solid principles. However, 
though the proverb, Trop de sucre dans 
la jeunessCy mauvaises dents dans la 
vieillessey applies here, as well as in the 
physical training of children, it ought 
to be remembered that whilst children 

of large sympathies are quite common 

[222] 



THE INTELLIGENT CHILD. 

in some, especially southern, countries, 
we have not so many in America ; and 
they are becoming fewer day by day 
amid the materialistic tendency of 
modern life, which is calculated to dry 
up the sentimental element and to turn 
it into self-love of some other kind. 

Crescendo. 

A second class of children referred 
to are those in whom the desire to 
know and the capacity to understand 
predominate over the qualities of the 
heart or the will. Such children must 
be reached through their minds. Al- 
though the teacher can fully control 
the child only by the attraction of the 
heart, yet it is necessary first to find 
and to open the way to the heart. In 

the predominantly intelligent child this 

[223] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

is done by making it understand its 
deficiency. Seeing and reflecting to 
some extent upon its want, there arises 
in the young soul a longing for that 
which it lacks, to fill the void rec- 
ognized in its nature. This longing 
awakens the operation of the heart, and 
gives the educator an opportunity to 
present an attraction by which the 
child can be led forward and drawn 
upward. 

It would, therefore, be an error to 
appeal directly to the sentiment of 
affection in a child of this disposition, 
before we have made it understand the 
quality of its weakness and the value 
of that which it lacks. This under 
standing on the part of the young is 
mostly brought about by a judicious 

measure of humiliations in opposition 

[224] 



SLOW, BUT GROWING. 

to the things on which the child natu- 
rally prides itself. But such humilia- 
tions must not he imposed; they must 
be made to meet the child spontane- 
ously, must come upon it gradually 
(crescendo) in the course of its tasks ; 
and the ingenious teacher will readily 
find means to let the young talent try 
its strength upon problems just beyond 
its reach, looking quietly on, as if to 
say: After all, you are not so smart, 
my child, as one might expect. Thus 
the child is made to see in itself the 
cause of its humiliation, instead of in- 
wardly resenting it as an act which the 
teacher inflicts upon it as a penalty for, 
or a safeguard against, pride. 

But here, too, nothing is so much to 
be recommended as slow proceeding, 
waiting and watching until the child is 

[225J 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

ready to profit by the operation of our 
method, " If you make fire with 
green wood, you will get more smoke 
than heat." 

Staccato. 

The staccato movement in music is 
produced by short pauses, which sepa- 
rate or detach the successive sounds 
of a melody or rhythmic passage. It 
serves to rivet attention upon the in- 
dividual notes, giving them a certain 
distinct emphasis. There is a similar 
manner of impressing upon the child's 
mind the idea of order and submission, 
by separating the personal feelings of 
fear or regard which the pupil conceives 
for the teacher from the regard which 
is due to the law of the school. We 

all know the child in whom the will- 

[226] 



SAVE YOUR CORRECTIONS. 

power predominates over affections or 
personal regard for superiors. It must 
be ruled and corrected by law, by 
timely command, by regular applica- 
tion to work. Yetj let me say at once 
that this method must not in any way 
be understood to weaken the principle 
that " a good teacher rules by influence 
rather than by force and violence.*' 
The habit of constantly impressing 
and enforcing orders by the use of 
reproving words is a sure way to fail in 
obtaining respect for either the law or 
the teacher; and oft-repeated correction 
of this kind seriously injures the child's 
disposition. Let the teacher who finds 
that he or she has to control such 
children watch their propensities and 
ebullitions of self-will for some time 

before appearing to notice and there- 

[227] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

fore to punish them, unless there is 
question of gross faults which force 
themselves on our attention. Then, 
having seen what needs correction, let 
the announcement be made, as coming 
from a superior authority, of certain 
rules of conduct to be observed in 
the class under proportionate penalty. 
These rules should, it must be ob- 
served, be hut feWy and such as can 
readily be observed under ordinary cir- 
cumstances. If they be sufficiently 
definite to cover the more common 
and disturbing breaches of discipline, it 
will give the teacher an excuse to ignore 
lesser faults, and to use discretion at 
times toward indulgence, until the 
general improved tone of discipline in 
the class allows a further refining. 
^here is harm in making rules whichy the 

[228] 



INSIST ON RULE. 

teacher foresees, or ought to foresee, 
will not or cannot be observed. Assum- 
ing that a good, well-considered set of 
rules is made, the children will, of 
course, at once test their strength by 
violating them. The teacher may show 
sympathy for the delinquents; but the 
inexorable law with its penalty remains 
and is to blame for all the poutings and 
tears that follow. Gradually the child 
finds that it has to fear only the un- 
yielding law, and not the teacher. In- 
deed the latter should always sym- 
pathize with the young delinquents, 
whilst still urging them to obedience. 
Let the child find out that avoidance 
of the painful consequences of violat- 
ing the rules is possible only if it 
observes the rules. It will not blame 

the teacher but the rule, which is un- 

[229] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

feeling and unchangeable, or ought to 
be regarded so. Thus the same force 
which leads the child to obedience 
leads it also to esteem for the teacher, 
and the element of courage is devel- 
oped through the will, which turns in 
the direction of order and docility. 

There is one exception to this method 
of correction in which the educator 
maintains a constantly pleasant man- 
ner whilst appealing to the Inexorable 
demand of the law of order. This 
exception is the case of any open vio- 
lation of the reverence due to God, or 
of holy things which are understood to 
involve directly His honor. A teacher 
who can make upon the child the im- 
pression that he or she condones every- 
thing except offenses against God^ at once 

elevates the child to a higher plane 

[230] 



SIN THE CHIEF WRONG. 

of view, and secures absolute authority 
over the pupil. In all matters causing 
faults against order, propriety, appli- 
cation to scholastic tasks, etc., the child 
encounters a more or less definitely 
foreseen penalty inflicted by the exist- 
ing rules, which process gradually forces 
upon the young mind the recognition 
of the external order of things, and 
instinctively develops convictions re- 
garding the intrinsic value of law. In 
these cases the teacher has hardly to 
make any words. But it is different 
when there is question of the honor 
due to God, and of sin ; then it is well 
that the child should meet the well- 
governed but evident indignation of 
the teacher. For in doing so it will 
recognize in the teacher the true and 

consistent representative of God, a 

[231] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

sentiment which elevates the dignity of 
the teacher, and supplies those forces 
for governing the child that may other- 
wise be lacking, either by reason of the 
absence of certain personal qualities in 
the superior or by reason of circum- 
stances in which it is particularly diffi- 
cult to control the child. 

Yet, whatever necessity there may be 
for applying correction, whether in mat- 
ters of mere deportment and applica- 
tion or in the more serious cases of 
sin, the double rule of moderation and 
of seeking if possible a permanent 
remedy which goes to the core of the 
evil, holds good throughout the educa- 
tional process. Constantly rehearsed 
correction of faults is never, on the 
whole, successful. Take a shrub in 

your garden, some root-branch of 

[232] 



TIE THE BRANCH. 

which bends across the path. Every 

time you pass by you beat it aside or 

you lift it up ; but it comes down each 

time, and tires and irritates you in the 

constant effort to avoid its straggHng 

annoyance. Is there no other way? 

Yes; take a string, tie it around the 

bush to uphold the froward branch; 

shortly the cells in the lower part of 

the stem contract and accommodate 

themselves to the forced position, and 

by degrees growing stronger they will 

hold the branch in place, so that, 

when the string is removed, the shrub is 

orderly by its own developed strength. 

Of course you must measure your string 

and note the quality ; not bind too 

tight, lest the branch break; not use 

a string too weak, lest it snap and the 

relaxed branch hurt some passer-by. 

[233J 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 
MODERATO. 

We have seen that the quahty of 
courage, essential in a good teacher, is 
developed in the pupil by bringing 
under control the heart, the mind, and 
the will, — the operation of the three- 
fold center of action. To do this 
effectually it is necessary not only that 
the teacher ascertain the disposition or 
peculiar character of the child, but also 
that she should gauge the limits of its 
capacity in the threefold direction be- 
fore indicated. This demands in the 
teacher the virtue of justice or modera- 
tion, so as to form a proper estimate of 
what the child can do, and also to act 
out the sentiments which that estimate 
inspires. Fortitude or courage, when 
not balanced by justice, becomes a 

danger and a temptation, inasmuch as 

[234] 



VALUE NATURAL VIRTUE. 

it yields to impulses of zeal, of dis- 
couragement after failure, of haphazard 
ventures and foolhardy undertakings, 
which destroy the previous efforts of 
better-minded educators. 

Justice, as defined by the scholastics, 
is the consistent or sustained deter- 
mination to render to every one his 
proper rights. Every one — that is to 
say, first to God ; then to those who 
directly represent His claims in the 
Church ; next to those who represent 
the civil and social order ; and finally, 
to our fellow-men, the images of God. 

It is important that we recognize the 

fact that, in the educational process, 

justice as a supernatural virtue is for 

the most part to be built upon justice 

as a natural virtue. And this gives 

value to the study of the classics. The 

[235] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

pupil learns to recognize that there is 
such a thing as natural virtue, and to 
look for it, and respect it in those who 
are not of the household of the faith. 
Furthermore, it will escape that insid- 
ious view so dangerous in practice, 
though defensible in theory, namely, 
that because faith furnishes an antidote 
to the malice of sin, therefore Catholics 
are excusable for neglecting the external 
virtues of which non-Catholics who 
are, often falsely, supposed to polish 
only the outside of the platter, are as 
a rule more careful. The child will 
learn that truthfulness, charity, purity, 
are virtues which may be cultivated by 
those who are not so fortunate as to be 
in the fold of Christ, and that these 
virtues dispose them for the grace of 

faith ; and the fact that these gifts are 

[236] 



SCIENTIFIC TRUTH. 

infinitely ennobled by Baptism does not 

establish a claim of superior merit, but 

only one of deeper gratitude, together 

with the graver duty of guarding the 

treasure with more fidelity. On the 

other hand, the child will also be made 

aware of the fact that the passions are 

scars and weaknesses which result from 

original sin, and that religious training 

and the grace of faith do not so much 

eradicate the passions as rather teach 

us how to subdue them. 

Justice likewise requires that the 

teacher keep the pupil alive to a proper 

estimate of the scientific studies for 

which the young mind may feel an 

attraction, or possess special aptitude. 

The sciences are disciplines. They aid 

us in the discovery of truth; but it 

must not be forgotten that they always 

[237] 



THE HARMONY OK THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

rest upon fallible senses and fallible 
reason. They cannot by their demon- 
strative power supersede the facts of 
revelation, for the truth of which God*s 
testimony vouches, even when we do 
not understand them. Pious leorends 
are not, of course, facts of revelation; 
though it must be noted that the 
temper of mind which easily rejects or 
treats with disrespect the reputed mani- 
festations in the supernatural order 
which command the respect of good 
and intelligent persons of any age or 
country is not a healthy one. Never- 
theless, it is a singular fact, due prob- 
ably to the proneness toward wrong 
ingrafted in human nature by original 
sin, that the mind will accept as 
demonstrated any plausible scientific 

hypothesis, whilst it rejects divine 

[238] 



DIGNITY OF CORRECTION. 

truths, which rest upon much superior 
motives of credibility. This tendency 
of the naturally scientific mind toward 
skepticism needs to be guarded against 
and counteracted in early life, when 
the rudiments of the sciences are being 
taught ; and it is done by emphasizing 
the difference between supernatural and 
natural causes and eifects. 

The principle of justice must like- 
wise be steadily kept sight of in cases 
where the teacher is bound to punish 
the pupil. The minister of penalty must 
ever preserve the dignity and imparti- 
ality of an instrument of the Eternal 
Lawgiver. Thus the exercise of this 
virtue forestall^ all morbid exaggeration, 
all manifestation of caprice, of weak- 
ness in temperament, or of preferences 

based on individual likes and dislikes. 
[239] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

It may be asked : How can a teacher 
help having natural likes or dislikes for 
children of different dispositions ? The 
answer is that, whilst it is impossible to 
divest one*s self of the natural im- 
pression which attractive qualities in 
the child or their contraries inspire, we 
are not forced to manifest or act upon 
such impressions; nay, we are bound, 
in justice to our responsibility as edu- 
cators, to counteract the dislikes we 
may feel toward a child, and even more 
the natural attraction, especially when 
it is based mainly upon the impression 
of the senses. The teacher must keep 
an eye on the useful rather than the 
beautiful qualities of the child's nature. 
We may not like iodine in some forms, 
exhibiting an ugly, grayish color and 

a pungent, repulsive odor ; but we know 

[240] 



IODINE. 

its salutary uses as a medicine, and 
prefer it so, rather than in the form of 
the brilliant and beautiful purple vapors 
which it assumes when heated in a 
retort. The child's unattractive qual- 
ities are the ones that the educator 
must work upon ; they are the steps 
toward its reform and ultimate salva- 
tion. In time we may be able to spiri- 
tualize these homely forms, when they 
will rise and take on the brilliant 
beauty of which they are capable under 
the influence of supernatural fervor. 
Thus acting from principle and not 
upon feelings, the teacher personally 
cultivates the virtues of disinterested- 
ness, self-denial, and wisdom, which 
supply to the soul everything needful 
for the perfect accomplishment of a 

teacher's important work; for wisdom, 
[241] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

says the sacred writer/ leads those that 
are just through the right ways, and 
shows them the Kingdom of God, and 
gives them the knowledge of the holy 
things, and makes them honorable in 
their labors, and completes all their 
works for them: "Justum deduxit 
Dominus per vias rectas, et ostendit illi 
regnum Dei, et dedit illi scientiam 
sanctorum, et honestavit ilium in labo- 
ribus, et complevit labores illius." 

There can indeed be no reason for 
discouragement in the seemingly toil- 
some work of the religious teacher, if 
the rule of justice, which is the rule of 
the Religious Life, be kept before the 
mind. The child will pattern itself 
after the living model before it, and 
will reflect the spirit and the action of 

1 Wisdom lo : lo. 

242] 



DO AND TEACH 



the teacher. To be successful edu- 
cators we have to strive to express in 
our conduct what we would teach to 
the child : " He that shall do and teach, 
he shall be called great in the kingdom 
of heaven *' — " Qui autem fecerit et 
docuerit^ hie magnus vocabitur/'^ That 
demands, as we have seen, courage 
regulated by justice ; but it also means 
assured victory in the domain of true 
knowledge, true wisdom, which is the 
greatest power on earth : " Et certamen 
forte dedit illi ut vinceret, et sciret 
quoniam omnium potentior est sapi- 
entia.""" In other words, if the voca- 
tion of the religious teacher is a call to 
labor and self-denial, it is also a call to 
the noblest victory ; for He that bade 
us follow Him in this work, "gave a 

1 Matt. 5: 19. 2 Wisdom lo : 12. 

[243] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Strong conflict " that we " might over- 
come, and know that wisdom is mightier 
than all." And if our confidence were 
nevertheless to fail us in the midst of 
the struggle, we need but remember 
that our teacher*s chair is the footstool 
before the " Seat of Wisdom," our 
Blessed Lady, whom the language of 
the Church identifies with the Wisdom 
of Holy Writ. "Venite, filii," she 
whispers — " Come, children, listen to 
me, and I will teach you the fear of 
the Lord " — " Audite me : timorem 
Domini docebo vos." ' 

An Antiphon. 

Mary indeed is the model of the 

religious educator, and the qualities set 

^ Ps. 33. 

[244] 



OUR PERFECT MODEL. 



forth as requisite in the latter are beau- 
tifully portrayed in the antiphon with 
which the Church intones the canticle 
of the Magnificat on our Lady's feast : 
" Virgo prudentissima, quo progrederis ? 
quasi aurora valde rutilans. Tota for- 
mosa ' et suavis es, pulchra ut luna, 
electa ut sol — (terribilis ut castrorum 
acies ordinata)." 

With the Inspired seer we aslc the 
Virgin Mother of Christ what, in her 
most perfect foresight [prudentissimd)^ 
she points out as the characteristics of 
true progress [quo progrederis) ? And 
the answer is : It is a progress that 
enlightens by the gradual and temper- 
ate development of the affections, even 
as the blush of the rising sun sends 

forth its light and heat {aurora valde 

[245] 



THE HARMONY OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

rutilans) with a real, yet measured in- 
tensity. Tot a formosa^ that is, well 
formed, well instructed in every part. 
Suavis — always pleasant. Pulchra ut 
luna — fair by reason of the Divine Sun, 
which reflects His light in the teacher, 
moved by the forces of a supernatural 
love. Electa ut sol — the chosen, the 
elect of Christ, and like to Him in the 
beautiful spirit of charity which dis- 
penses light and warmth and fostering 
care to the young growth that rises 
toward the heavens. Nor is this all. 
Terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata 
marks the religious as a teacher be- 
longing to that noble band which like 
a well-ordered army in battle-array 
fights for truth and virtue, an army 

which, by its order, mspires that holy 

[246] 



THE SACRED CAUSE. 



fear and reverence which is the begin- 
ning of wisdom, a wisdom on which 
depend all our successes in the sacred 
cause of Christian education. 



THE END. 



PRINTED BY BENZIGER BROTHERS, NEW YORK, 
[247] 



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PUBLISHED BY 

BENZIGER BROTHERS, 
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Marcelle. a True Story. 

Master Fridolin. Emmy Giehrl. 

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My Strange Friend. Father Finn. 

Nan Nobody. Mary T. Waggaman. 

Old Charlmont's Seed-Bed. Sara Trainer Smith. 

Old Robber's Castle. Canon Schmid. 

Olive and the Little Cakes. 






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NOV 8 1902 



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